OUR  SLAVIC 
FELLOW  CITIZENS 


BY 

EMILY  GREENE  BALCH 

i 

Associate  Professor  of  Economics,  Wellesley  College 


NEW  YORK 

CHARITIES  PUBLICATION  COMMITTEE 
1910 


COPYRIGHT,  1910,  BY 
EMILY  GREENE  BALCH 


PRESS    OF    WM.    F.    FELL   CO. 
PHILADELPHIA 


PREFACE 

No  critic,  perhaps,  will  be  so  alive  to  the  defects  of 
this  study  as  is  the  author,  yet  it  is  hoped  that  the  book 
may  have  a  value  of  its  own.  It  is  at  least  based  upon 
first  hand  inquiry  both  in  Europe  and  in  America ;  and 
both  are  necessary.  Acquaintance  with  any  immigrant 
people  in  America  only  is  not  enough.  The  naturalist 
might  as  well  study  the  habits  of  a  lion  in  a  menagerie 
or  of  a  wild  bird  in  a  cage.  To  understand  the  immi 
grant  we  should  know  him  in  the  conditions  which  have 
shaped  him,  and  which  he  has  shaped,  in  his  own  village 
and  among  his  own  people ;  we  should  study  the  culture 
of  which  he  is  a  living  part,  but  which  he  is  for  the 
most  part  powerless  to  transport  with  him  to  his  new 
home.  He  must,  however,  be  known  also  as  he  de 
velops  in  America  in  an  environment  curiously  and 
intricately  blended  of  old  and  new  elements. 

Convinced  of  this,  I  spent  the  greater  part  of  the  year 
1905  in  Austria- Hungary,  studying  emigration  on  the 
spot,  and  over  a  year  in  visiting  Slavic  colonies  in  the 
United  States,  ranging  from  New  York  to  Colorado,  and 
from  the  Upper  Peninsula  of  Michigan  to  Galveston. 
California  was  unfortunately  not  reached.  One  autumn 
was  spent  as  a  boarder  in  the  family  of  a  Bohemian 
workingman  in  New  York  City.  Everywhere  in  Europe 
and  this  country,  whether  or  not  furnished  with  letters  of 
introduction,  I  found  Slavs  of  all  classes  and  kinds  ready 
to  show  me  kindness  and  lend  me  intelligent  and  cordial 
assistance.  ^\ 

While  this  work  has  been  in  progress  two  most  inter 
esting  books  by  Dr.  Edward  A.  Steiner  have  appeared 
which  deal  with  the  same  subject  with  an  insider's 

v 

360473 


Vlll  PREFACE 

Their  names  are  literally  too  many  to  include,  but  I 
must  at  least  make  special  mention  of  my  obligations 
to  the  unselfish  traveling  comrade  who  accompanied  me 
through  Austria- Hungary. 

EMILY  GREENE  BALCH 

WELLESLEY  COLLEGE 
March,  1910 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS xii 

LIST  OF  MAPS  AND  CHARTS xiv 

LIST  OF  TABLES xv 


PART  I 
SLAVIC  EMIGRATION  AT  ITS  SOURCE 

CHAPTER  I 
Introductory 3 

CHAPTER  II 
The  Slavic  Nationalities  in  Europe 10 

CHAPTER  III 
Conditions  in  Austria- Hungary 28 

CHAPTER  IV 

General    Character    of    Slavic    Emigration    from    Austria- 
Hungary 37 

CHAPTER  V 

* 

Bohemian  Emigration 63 

CHAPTER  VI 
Slovak  Emigration 85 

CHAPTER  VII 

Emigration  from  Galicia;  Austrian  Poles  and  Ruthenians.  .  .    120 

CHAPTER  VIII 
The  Slovenians 148 

CHAPTER  IX 

Emigration  from  Croatia 156 

ix 


X  TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  X 
The  Adriatic  Coast  of  Austria- Hungary 191 

PART  II 
SLAVIC  IMMIGRANTS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

CHAPTER  XI 
The  History  of  Slavic  Immigration  Previous  to  1880 205 

CHAPTER  XII 
The  Newer  Slavic  Immigration:   Since  1880 236 

CHAPTER  XIII 
The  Present  Distribution  of  Slavs  in  the  United  States 253 

CHAPTER  XIV 
The  Economic  Situation  of  the  Slav  in  America 282 

CHAPTER  XV 
Slavs  as  Farmers 317 

CHAPTER  XVI 
Household  Life 349 

CHAPTER  XVII 
The  Organized  Life  of  Slavs  in  America 378 

CHAPTER  XVIII 
The  Question  of  Assimilation 396 

APPENDICES 
STATISTICAL,  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  AND  OTHER  NOTES 

I.  Population  of  Austria- Hungary  by  Language 429 

II.  A  Peasant  Millionaire 431 

III.  Austrian  Taxes 432 

IV.  Slavic  Immigrants  not  Coming  to  Join  Relatives 

or  Friends 433 

V.   Statistical  Sources  of  Information  as  to  Emigra 
tion  from  Austria- Hungary 433 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS  XI 

PAGE 

VI.  Some  Bohemian  Nursery  Rhymes 444 

VII.  Slovak  Population 445 

VIII.  Studies  of  Slovak  Emigration 447 

IX.  Slovak  Memorials  Published  in  America 448 

X.  A  Case  of  Hungarian  Political  Persecution 448 

XL  A  Ruthenian  Poet  in  Canada 449 

XII.  Emigration  from  Carniola  to  America. 

Data   From   Inquiry   Carried   on  Through  the 
Post   Office  by  the  Governor  of  Carniola 

Since    1893 4S1 

XIII.  Emigration  from  Croatia-Slavonia 452 

XIV.  Bohemian    and    Polish    Literature    of    American 

Settlement 4S6 

XV.  Census  Data  to  1880  With  a  Critical  Consideration 
of  the  Use  of  the  Census  For  the  Purposes  of 

This  Study 458 

XVI.  Father  Kruszka's  List  of  the  Founding  of  Polish 

Parishes  Previous  to  1880 459 

XVII.  Slavic  Immigration  by  Nationalities  Since  1899.  . .  .  460 

XVIII.  Slavic  Aliens,  Admitted  and  Departed,  1908-1909  .  463 
XIX.   Immigrant  Arrivals  Who  Have  Been  in  the  United 

States  Before 463 

XX.  Wages  of  Unskilled  Laborers 464 

XXI.   Nationality  of  Men  Employed  by  Anthracite  and 

Bituminous  Coal  Companies 467 

XXII.  Statistics  of  Slavs  in  Agriculture 468 

XXIII.  Money  Orders  to  Europe 471 

XXIV.  Polish  Farmers 473 

XXV.  Census  Data  as  to  Intermarriage 475 

XXVI.  A  Polish  Criticism  of  Church  Schools 477 

XXVII.  Percentage   of   Illiteracy   Among   Immigrants    14 
Years  of  Age  and  Over  for  the  Year  Ended 

June  30,  1900 479 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 483 

INDEX 515 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


A  "Slav  Invader " Frontispiece 

Slovak  Peasant  Dress 7 

A  Bosnian  Village 13 

A  Croatian  Zadruga 21 

Feudal  Labor  Dues  in  Bohemia.     Abolished  1848 39 

Embroidered  Bodice  of  a  Slovak  peasant 39 

Primitive  Methods  of  Production  in  Slovensko 55 

Augustine  Herman 67 

Bohemian  Town  Scenes 75 

Bohemian  and  Moravian  Scenes 8 1 

Slovak  Scenes 89 

Slovak  Peasant  Girls 93 

Shepherd  in  a  Slovak  Valley 99 

An  Abode  of  Misery 99 

A  Slovak  Type : 113 

Poles  From  About  Cracow 125 

Ruthenians  and  Galician  Jews 129 

Galician  Types 141 

A  Slovenian  Girl 151 

Karst  Country  in  Carniola  and  Croatia 159 

Croatian  Village  Scenes 165 

Agram  (Zagrab),  Capital  of  Croatia 171 

Croatian  Types,  Lika  District 177 

Bishop  Strossmayer 181 

Croatian  Scenes 187 

On  the  Coast  of  the  Adriatic 191 

In  Istria  and  Dalmatia 193 

Sowing  in  Montenegro 197 

A  Home  in  Montenegro 201 

Manor  House  of  Frederick  Phillips 207 

First  House  in  Bethlehem 207 

Priests  and  Patriots 229 

Slovak  Girl  at  Ellis  Island 237 

Bohemian  Immigrant 237 

Slovak  Immigrant  Women 243 

Slavic  Workingmen,  Pittsburgh 285 

Croatian  Saloon  in  Chicago 307 

Croatian  Saloon  in  Hibbing,  Minnesota 307 

xiii 


XIV  LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Polish  Market  Scene,  Stevens  Point,  Wisconsin 323 

Farm  Near  Polonia,  Wisconsin 323 

Sod  House  of  Old  Time  Pioneer 323 

Bohemian  Home  Near  Kewaunee,  Wisconsin 323 

In  Old  Hadley 329 

Slovak  Women  at  Ellis  Island 337 

A  Slovak  Family  Bound  for  the  West 337 

Polish  Berry  Pickers  in  Maryland 341 

"Griner"  Girls  (Slovenians)  in  a  Cleveland  Hardware 

Factory 355 

In  a  Pennsylvania  Mining  Patch 361 

A  Croatian  Butcher's  Shop  in  Globeville,  Colorado 365 

Croatian  Copper  Miners,  Calumet,  Michigan 365 

Better  Types  of  "Company"  Houses  for  Slavic  Miners  ....  373 

A  Slovak  Mass  Meeting  in  Cleveland 379 

A  Polish  Hall  in  Chicago 379 

Titles  of  Some  of  the  Slavic  Newspapers  Published  in  the 

United  States 383 

Slavic  Churches  of  One  Mining  Town 389 

A  Christmas  Manger  in  a  Croatian  Church  in  Pennsylvania  .  .  407 

A  Croatian  Wedding  Party  in  Allegheny,  Pennsylvania 407 

Polish  Citizens  of  Massachusetts 413 

A  Croatian  Picnic  on  Lake  Superior 421 


LIST  OF  MAPS 

MAP  PAGE 

I.  Location  of  the  Slavic  Race 18 

II.   Political  Divisions  of  Austria-Hungary 30 

III.  Nationalities    of  Austria-Hungary  and    the    Balkan 

States;   as  Indicated  by  Language  Spoken 32 

IV.  Austria-Hungary;  Physical  Features 35 

V.  Emigration  Districts  of  Austria.     Loss  and  Gain  of 

Population  in  Austria  as  the  Net  Result  of  Emi 
gration  and  Immigration  During  the  Decade 
Dec.  31,  iSpo-Dec.  31,  1900,  by  Political  Dis 
tricts  35 

VI.  Village   Map,   Moravia 41 

VII.  Emigration  from  Hungary  by  Counties 105 

VIII.  Galicia  and  Bukowina  Showing  Languages  Spoken  ...    123 

IX.  Croatia-Slavonia 173 

X.  Destinations  of  Slavic   Immigrants  for  the  Decade 

Ending  June  30,  1908 257 

XI.  Farmers  and  Farm  Laborers;  One  or  Both  Parents 
Born  in  Austria-Hungary,  Poland  or  Russia. 
Numbers  by  States 321 


LIST  OF  CHARTS 

CHART  PAGE 

I.  Census  Data  for  Natives  of  Specified  Countries  in  the 

United  States,  1860,  1870  and  1880 212 

II.   Immigration  from  Austria-Hungary,  1860-1908 246 

III.  Course  of  Wages  of  Unskilled  Labor 287 

IV.  Comparison  of  Four  Chief  Occupations:  Sons  of  Na 

tives  of  Austria,  Bohemia,  Hungary,  Poland,  and 

Russia  Together 312 

V.  Chief    Occupations:     Comparison    of    the    Different 

Slavic  Groups 313 

VI.  Slavs  in  Certain  Occupations  Compared  with  Totals 

of  all  Nationalities  in  the  Same  Occupations 315 

VII.  Comparison,  for  Certain  Occupations,  between  Slavs 
and  the  Three  Other  Foreign  Groups  that  have 
the   Largest  Number  in  the  Given  Occupation.  .  .    316 
XV 


LIST  OF  TABLES 

TABLE  PAGE 

1 .  Numbers  and  Location  of  the  Main  Slavic  Nationalities  .      1 7 

2.  Persons  Occupied  in  Agriculture.     Austrian  census  of 

1890 46 

3.  Population  of  Austria;  Movement  and  Density 48 

4.  Average  Daily  Wages  of  Agricultural  Laborers,  1891.  ..  56 

5.  Bohemian  and  Moravian   Immigrant  Aliens  admitted 

to  the  United  States,  1899-1909 74 

6.  Total  Emigration  from  Hungary,  as  Reported  by  Local 

Authorities  in  Hungary,  1896-1906 102 

7.  Emigration  and  Re-Immigration,  1905 102 

8.  Slovak    Immigrant    Aliens    Admitted    to    the    United 

States 103 

9.  Chief  Slovak  Counties  of  Hungary.     Net  Loss  and  Gain 

by  Emigration  and  Immigration 104 

10.  Number  of  Polish  and  Ruthenian  Immigrant  Aliens  Ad 

mitted  to  the  United  States,  1899-1909 133 

11.  Croatia,  Percentage  of  Literacy  and  Illiteracy 167 

12.  Immigration,  1899-1909 195 

13.  Arrivals  of  Alien  Passengers  and  Immigrants,  1850-1880    211 

14.  Slavs  in  the  United  States.     Census  of  1880 213 

15.  Natives    of    Austria-Hungary,    Bohemia,   Poland     and 

Russia,  1880,  1890  and  1900 244 

1 6.  Number  and  Percentage  of  White  Persons  of  Foreign 

Parentage  Having  Either  One  or  Both  Parents 
Born  in  Specified  Countries,  by  States  and  Terri 
tories;  Arranged  Geographically:  1900 254 

17.  Destinations  of  Slavic  Immigrants  During  the  Decade 

Ended  June  30,  1908 256 

18.  Bohemians  in  the  United  States 261 

19.  Poles  in  the  United  States,  Estimates  of  Rev.   W.  X. 

Kruszka  and  of  the  "Polish  Press  " 263 

20.  Poles  in  Cities.     Anonymous  Estimate  in  Polish  Press, 

December  15,    1908 264 

21.  Bulgarian,    Servian   and    Montenegrin    Alien    Arrivals, 

1899-1909 273 

22.  Russians;   Alien  Arrivals,  1899-1909 277 

23.  Estimates   of  Total   Slavic   Population   in  the   United 

States — By  Nationality 280 

xvii 


XV111  LIST    OF    TABLES 

TABLE  PAGE 

24.  Alien  Arrivals  and  Departures,  1904-1908 295 

25.  Immigration  and  Emigration  of  Certain  Races  During 

the  Year  Ended  June  30,  1909 295 

26.  Females   of   Specified    Parentage    Engaged   in    Gainful 

v     Occupations 353 

27.  Leading   Occupations   for   Females   of   Each   Specified 

Parentage.     Absolute  Numbers  and  Percentages  of 

all  Female  Workers  of  the  Given  Percentage 354 

28.  Churches   of   the    Slavic    Nationalities   in   the    United 

States 386 


APPENDIX  TABLES 

APPENDIX  PAGE 

I.  Population  of  Austria  by  Language.      1900 429 

A.  Non-Slavic  Languages 429 

B.  Slavic  Languages 430 

II.  Civil  Population  of  Hungary  by  Language.     1900  430 

III.  Austrian  Taxes 432 

IV.  Slavic  Immigrants  not  Coming  to  Join  Relatives 

or  Friends 433 

V.  Figures  from  Ports  of  Embarkation  for  Emigrants 

from  Austria 436 

Figures  from  Ports  of  Embarkation  for  Emigrants 

from  Hungary 437 

Figures  from  German  Ports  for  Emigrants  from 

Hungary.  By  Destinations 438 

Total  Oversea  Emigration  from  Hungary  by  Years 

as  Reported  from  Ports  of  Embarkation 438 

Number  of  embarkations  and  number  of  passes 

issued 440 

Total  Emigration  for  1907  from  Hungary  Proper 

and  from  Croatia-Slavonia 441 

A.  By  Sex 441 

B.  By  language 441 

C.  By  destination 442 

Heads  of  Families,  or  Persons  Emigrating  Inde 
pendently 442 

A.  By  Age 442 

B.  By  Occupation 442 

Returned  Emigrants 443 


LIST    OF    TABLES 


XIX 


APPENDIX  PAGE 

VII.  Slovak  Population 445 

XII.  Emigration  From  Carniola  to  America 451 

Emigration,  by  Destinations,  1893-1904 451 

Number  of  Married  and  Single  Men,  Women  and 

Children  Emigrating,  1893—1904 451 

Causes  of  Emigration  and  Disposition  of  Prop 
erty 245 

XIII.  Emigration  to  North  America   from  Croatia-Sla- 

vonia.     By  Counties  and  Municipalities 452 

Croatia-Slavonia  Net  Loss  and  Gain  by  Emigra 
tion  and  Immigration 453 

Emigration      from     Croatia-Slavonia     to      North 

America  During  the 'Four  Years  1900-1903.    454 

A.  All  Emigrants. 

B.  Persons  Emigrating  as  Heads  of  Families 

or  Independently 455 

C.  Persons  Accompanying  head  of  Family.  ...    455 
XVI.  Father  Kruszka's  List  of  the  Founding  of  Polish 

Parishes  Previous  to  1880 459 

XVII.  Slavic  Immigration  by  Nationalities  Since  1899.  . .  .    460 
Total   Slavic    Immigration   to   the  United    States 

for  the  Decade  1899-1908 460 

A.  By  Countries  of  Last  Previous  Residence .  .    460 

B.  By  Nationality 461 

Immigration  to  the  United  States  from  the  Five 

Main   Sources    of    Slavic    Emigrants    During 

the  Decade  1899-1908 : 461 

Slavic  Immigration  by  Nationalities 462 

XVIII.   Slavic  Aliens,  Admitted  and  Departed,  1908-1909  .    463 
XIX.   Immigrant  Arrivals  Who  Have  Been  In  the  United 

States  Before 463 

XX.   Wages  of  Unskilled  Laborers 464 

Slavs  and  Hungarians — Northern  States 465 

Italians — Northern  States 465 

Slavs  and  Hungarians — Southern  States 466 

Italians — Southern  States 466 

XXI.   Nationality  of  Men  Employed  by  Anthracite  and 

Bituminous  Coal  Companies 467 

Number  and  Per  cent  of  Each  Nationality  Work 
ing  for  1 1 6  Anthracite  Companies  of  Pennsyl 
vania  in  1905 467 

Number  and  Per  cent  of  Each  Nationality  Work 
ing  for  398  Bituminous  Companies  of  Penn 
sylvania  in  1905 467 


XX 


LIST    OF    TABLES 


APPENDIX  PAGE 

XXII.  Statistics  of  Slavs  in  Agriculture 468 

Percentage  of  Total  Farmers  in  Each  State 
Whose  Parents  Were  Born  in  Specified 
Countries 469 

Males  Ten  Years  of  Age  and  Over  of  Specified 
Parent  Nativity  Gainfully  Employed  as 
Specified 469 

Number  Occupied  in  Agriculture  per  Thousand 
Males  of  Specified  Parentage  Engaged  in 

Gainful  Occupations 470 

XXIII.  Money  Orders  to  Europe 47 1 

International  Money  Orders  Issued  in  the  United 
States  and  Sent  to  Italy  and  the  Slavic 
Countries  for  Each  Calendar  Year  from 
1900  to  1906 471 

Amount  of  Money  Orders  Sent  to  Italy  and  to 
Austria,  Hungary  and  Russia  per  Immi 
grant  for  the  Entire  Seven  Years,  1900  to 
1906 472 

Number  and  Amount  (Total  and  Average)  of 
Money  Orders  Sent  to  Italy,  Austria, 
Hungary,  and  Russia  During  the  Seven 
Years  Ending  December  31,  1906 472 

Average  Amount  of  Each  Money  Order  Sent  to 

Principal  Countries  in  1906 472 

XXV.  Census  Data  as  to  Intermarriage 475 

Native  White  Persons  of  Foreign  Parentage 475 

White  Persons   (Native  and  Foreign  Born)   of 

Foreign  Parentage 475 

White  Persons  Having  Fathers  Born  as  Speci 
fied 475 

White  Persons  Having  Mothers  Born  as  Speci 
fied 476 

Persons  of  Mixed  Foreign  Parentage  Classified 

According   to    Combinations    of    Parentage  476 
XXVII.   Percentage   of     Illiteracy   among    Immigrants    14 
Years  of  Age  and  Over  for  the  Year  Ended 
June  30,  1900 479 


PART  I 

SLAVIC  EMIGRATION  AT  ITS 
SOURCE 


Uber  den  Bergen  sind  auch  Leute 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTORY* 

The  importance  of  American  immigration  is  something  Significance 
that  it  is  easy  to  underrate,  just  as  it  is  easy  not  to  see  °f  "nmigra- 
the  forest  for  the  trees.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  has  history  America 
anything  of  equal  importance  to  show  since  the  great 
folk  migrations  which  marked  the  breakdown  of  classic 
culture  and  the  birth  of  the  new  Europe? 

The  era  of  exploration  and  colonization  of  the  fifteenth  Contest  for 
and  succeeding  centuries  opened  up  to  Europe  vast  new 
regions  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  but  of  these  the 
American  continents  offered  incomparably  the  most  im 
portant  opportunities  for  the  spread  and  development  of 
European  civilization.  The  paramount  question  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  not  whether  medievalism 
was  to  yield  its  last  strongholds  to  modernism, — a 
foregone  conclusion  only  ratified  by  the  French  Revolu 
tion, — but  rather,  who  was  to  hold  the  body  of 
.the  North  American  continent.  This  was  determined 
externally  and  apparently  by  wars  and  treaties,  but  more 
truly  by  the  character  of  the  migration  to  the  new 
territory.  Soldiers,  missionaries,  traders  and  trappers 
necessarily  yielded  to  expanding  colonies  of  permanent 
settlers. 

The    fate    of    nations    was    such    that    England    ac-   English 
quired,  as  we  know,  the  control  both  cultural  and  polit-  contro1 
ical  over  this  region.     The  American  Revolution  broke, 
for  the  most  important  section   of  the  continent,   the 
political  tie  to  England,  but   only  to  leave  the  United 
States  to  continue  its  independent  development  on  the 
old  foundations  of  English  culture.     The  new  world  of 

*  In  the  Bibliography  will  be  found  complete  references  to 
all  writings  mentioned  in  the  text  or  in  the  foot-notes. 

3 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Other  con 
stituents 


Immigra 
tion  to  1880 
English- 
speaking  or 
Teutonic 


The  new 
immigration 


the  Republic  was   substantially  a  renovated  and  mod 
ernized  England. 

But  with  all  the  English  predominance  in  speech, 
institutions  and  views,  there  were  always  present  con 
siderable  non-English  elements;  and  culture,  and  to  a 
less  degree  speech,  was  from  the  beginning  modified  and 
streaked  with  other  national  factors.  How  important 
the  non-English  contributions  were  is  shown  in  Professor 
Commons'  chapter  on  Colonial  Race  Elements.* 

Since  that  time,  moreover,  the  country  has  received 
an  almost  continuous  inflow  which,  at  first  made  up  of 
people  either  English  or  English-speaking,  has  gradually 
come  to  be  of  a  composition  more  and  more  alien  to  the 
English  in  blood,  speech  and  ideas.  From  the  forties  to 
the  eighties,  Irish  and  Germans  were  the  chief  immi 
grants.  That  is,  until  1880  the  bulk  of  the  new  additions 
to  the  population  were  either  English  in  speech  or,  as 
Teutons,  fairly  near  in  blood  to  the  English. 

But  with  the  eighties,  roughly  speaking,  began  a  new 
wave  of  immigration,  greater  in  numbers  than  any  pre 
vious  influx,  differently  constituted  racially,  different 
in  economic  character.  The  thirty  years  1880-1909 
brought  us  over  seventeen  million  immigrants  as 
against  less  than  ten  million  in  the  preceding  forty 
years.  Not  only  did  numbers  thus  increase,  but 
during  this  period  three  new  elements  have  been  com 
ing  to  be  of  main  importance  among  our  immigrants; 
namely,  Italians,  Jews,  and  Slavs.  It  is  not  until 
1899  that  it  is  possible  to  get  the  necessary  data,  but  in 
the  eleven  years  since  then  these  three  groups  have  made 
nearly  six  out  of  every  ten  immigrants,  Italians  being 
about  a  quarter  and  Slavs  over  one-fifth  of  our  total 
immigrant  body  for  that  period. 

The  figures  for  the  eleven  years  are:  Total  immigra 
tion,  8,514,103;  Slavs,  1,849,139  (22  per  cent);  Italians, 
2,061,148  (24  per  cent);  Hebrews,  990,182  (12  per  cent). 

The  change  in  economic  character  referred  to,   con- 
*  Commons,  John  R.:  "Races  and  Immigrants  in  America." 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

sisted  in  a  lessened  proportion  of  immigrants  coming  to 
settle  (especially  of  those  coming  to  settle  as  farmers), 
and  an  increased  proportion  of  laborers  and  of  men 
coming  without  their  families  with  no  intention  of  re 
maining.  In  all  these  characteristics  Slavic  immigra 
tion  shares. 

Necessarily  this  large  influx  of  immigrants  permanently 
affects  the  substance  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States.  In  1900  only  a  little  over  half  (53.8  per  cent) 
of  the  population  were  what  are  commonly  understood 
by  the  term  "  Americans  " ;  that  is,  white  people  of  native 
parentage  on  both  sides.*  The  colored  population  of 
native  parentage  accounts  for  not  quite  one-eighth  (11.9 
per  cent),  and  persons  with  one  or  both  parents  foreign 
make  up  the  remainder  of  over  one-third  (34.3  per  cent). 
Even  of  the  "American"  half,  an  indefinite  number  are 
descendants  of  foreign  grandparents  and  of  slightly 
more  remote  foreign  ancestors. 

To  measure  what  all  this  means  we  must  remember  The  two 
that  back  of  all  political  developments,  of  all  social  in-   history— 
stitutions,  lie  the  two  great  fundamental  facts  of  human   population 
history — land  and  men.     The  innate  qualities  of  these  v^ronrrient 
two  determine  all  the  rest.     Thus,  the  character  of  the 
continent  and  the  character  of  immigration  have  deter 
mined  and  are  determining  the  quality  of  the  civilization 
of  this  country,  perhaps  the  greatest  seat  of  the  white  race. 

There  is  much  alarmist  writing  about  our  immigrants,    Immigra- 
and  especially  about  those  who  come  from  the  southeast  m^nes^he" 
of  Europe.     Whether  or  not  sharing  in  the  alarm,  must  first 
we  not  recognize  the  movement  as  one  of  transcendent 
importance,  and  certainly  one  which  it  behooves  us  to 
understand  as  far  as  we  can? 

Yet   the   facts    are   realized   by    comparatively   few.   Slavs  be- 
Many  people   are   quite  unaware   that   the   Slavs  have  f^orUnt 
grown  to  be  not  merely  a  very  large  part  of  the  total  element 
immigration,  but  an  important  element  in  our  permanent 

*  If  we  add  white  persons  with  one  parent  native  born  the 
percentage  rises  to  60.5. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Slavic  his 
tory  un 
familiar 


Complexity 
of  Slavic 
national 
groups 


population.  Indeed,  as  we  shall  see,  reliable  estimates 
show  that  there  are  some  four  tn  "i~  mjllinn  nmwiiii 
the  United  States.  We  are  unaware  of  these  facts  partly 
because  the  movement  is  so  recent;  partly,  too,  be 
cause,  the  Slavs  are  less  conspicuous  among  us  than  the 
Italians  and  Jews.  They  are  less  massed  in  the  great 
cities ;  they  are  not  constantly  under  the  eyes  of  the  ready 
writer  and  the  reformer.  A  caricature  of  an  Italian  or  a 
Jew  on  a  vaudeville  stage  would  be  as  readily  recognized 
as  that  of  an  Irishman.  Is  this  true  of  any  Slavic 
type? 

Furthermore,  the  Slavic  group  of  peoples,  whether 
in  Europe  or  in  America,  is  much  less  well  known  to 
most  of  us  than  are  any  of  the  Germanic  or  Latin 
peoples,  or  the  Jews.  Italian  and  Hebrew  immigrants 
stand  against  a  background  of  familiar  history ;  we  know 
something  of  their  homes,  their  literature  and  their  racial 
characteristics.  This  is  much  less  true  of  the  Slavs. 

To  educated  people,  of  course,  certain  Slavic  countries 
are  fairly  well  known,  notably  Russia,  Poland  and  Bo 
hemia  ;  but  even  to  most  of  them  I  suspect  southeastern 
Europe  is  in  something  of  a  snarl.  Few  perhaps  would 
find  it  easy  to  locate  precisely  the  Austrian  provinces  of 
the  Bukowina  or  Carniola,  or  define  the  status  of  Bosnia, 
or  even  bound  Servia  or  Bulgaria. 

Not  only  this,  but  there  is  no  such  person  as  a  Slav 
any  more  than  there  is  such  a  person  as  a  Teuton  or  a 
Celt.  All  Slavs  are  primarily  members  of  some  distinct 
nationality;  they  are  Russians,  Poles,  or  what  not,  as 
the  Teuton  is  a  German  or  a  Swede  or  an  Englishman. 
With  all  but  the  chief  of  these  Slavic  nationalities  we 
are  so  little  acquainted  that  even  their  names  are  often 
unknown  to  us.  In  those  places  in  America  where 
Slavs  are  most  numerous,  in  mining  settlements  and  the 
industrial  centres  formed  about  great  foundries  or 
steel  works,  there  is  naturally  even  less  knowledge  of 
obscure  groups  of  foreigners  than  in  more  academic 
circles.  The  Americans,  Irish  and  others  who  have  to 


4    '    ^ 


SLOVAK  PEASANT  DRESS.     (See  page  91) 


man  s 
em 


Three  types  of  cloak  are  shown,  a  woman's  sheepskin  coat  with  wool  inside,  a  m 
sheepskin  jacket,  and  a  man's  cloak  of  white  felt  or  "hunia,"  trimmed  with  braiding  and 
broidery.      Boots  of  white  felt  are  also  shown.      The  embroidery  of  the  women  s  dress,  often 
so  beautiful,  is  not  conspicuous  here. 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

do  with  them,  whether  as  employers  or  as  fellow  workmen 
or  as  neighbors,  generally  neither  know  nor  care  enough 
to  attempt  any  distinctions. 

Frequently  some  one  name  is  hit  upon,  and  by  that  Confused 
all  foreigners  of  a  less  familiar  sort  are  called.  In  some  £°™encla" 
places  Slav  or  Slavish  serves  to  cover  all  but  English- 
speaking  and  German  people, — even  Italians,  who  are 
no  more  Slavs  than  they  are  Irishmen.  Dr.  Warne,  in 
his  excellent  study  of  the  situation  in  the  coal  regions, 
"The  Slav  Invasion  and  the  Mine  Workers,"  uses  the 
term  in  this  sense,  as  it  seems  to  me  most  unfortunately. 
In  another  place  all  may  be  called  Hungarians,  Huns  or 
Hunkies,  whether  or  not  they  ever  saw  or  heard  of 
Hungary;  or  they  may  all  be  Poles  or  Polanders  or 
Polacks,  whether  the  name  has  any  application  or  not. 
The  term  Austrians,  when  used  with  an  attempt  at 
precision,  seems  generally  to  designate  either  Italians 
from  the  Austrian  Tyrol,  or  the  Slovenes  from  Carniola 
and  neighboring  Austrian  provinces. 

Unfortunately,  the  unavoidable  complexity  of  Slavic 
classification  is  increased  by  the  confusion  and  multi 
plicity  of  the  English  nomenclature  as  found  in  official 
or  semi-official  reports  and  in  current  literature.  To 
designate  the  group  as  a  whole,  we  have  the  words  Slav, 
Slavic,  Slavonic,  Slavonian,  and  sometimes  Slavish, 
— by  some  authors  spelled  Sclav,  Sclavonic  and  so  forth. 
These  commonly  all  mean  the  same  thing,  but  Slavonian 
may  mean  specifically  "from  Slavonia"  (the  eastern 
part  of  Croatia-Slavonia),  and  Slavonian  and  Slavonic 
are  sometimes  used  to  mean  Slovak. 

As  regards  the  names  of  the  different  Slavic  nationali 
ties,  there  are  in  almost  every  case  a  shorter  and  a  longer 
form,  as  follows: 

Russ  Russian  Croat  Croatian 

Ruthene         Ruthenian  ~    ,  J  Servian  or 

Slovak  Slovakian  |  Serbian 

Slovene  Slovenian  Bulgar  Bulgarian 

Czech  or  Chekh         Bohemian 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Eight 
groups  of 
Slavic  im 
migrants 


Distinct 
though 
undistin 
guished 


The  Pole  alone  has  no  variant  of  his  name  in  good 
usage,  though  Polander  and  Polack  are  commonly 
heard.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  though  there  is 
now  no  authority  for  this  latter  form  of  the  name  (which 
is  apparently  borrowed  directly  from  the  Polish  word 
Polak,  plural  Polaci)  it  is  found  in  Hamlet:  "and  meet 
the  sledded  Polacks  on  the  ice." 

I  have  tried  in  each  case  to  use  the  more  familiar  form 
which,  except  for  the  Slovaks,  appeared  to  me  to  be  the 
longer  one.  The  Bohemian  word  Cech  I  have  repre 
sented  by  its  English  equivalent  Chekh  rather  than  by 
the  more  usual  spelling  Czech,  which  is  Polish  and  has 
nothing  to  justify  its  adoption  as  the  English  form. 

Of  the  thirty-nine  groups  recognized  in  the  classi 
fication  of  the  Immigration  Department  eight  are  Slav; 
namely  (in  order  of  numerical  importance  as  immigrants) , 
(i)  Polish,  (2)  Slovak,  (3)  Croatian  and  Slovenian,  (4) 
Ruthenian  or  Russniak,  (5)  Bohemian  and  Moravian, 
(6)  Bulgarian,  Servian  and  Montenegrin,  (7)  Russian, 
(8)  Dalmatian,  Bosnian  and  Herzegovinian.*  This  does 
not  exhaust  the  Slav  nationalities,  as  we  shall  see,  but 
it  is  enough  to  thoroughly  bewilder  most  Americans. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  often  impossible  in  America 
to  distinguish  these  national  groups,  the  Slovak,  the 
Slovenians,  and  so  on,  especially  as  the  men  themselves, 
ignorant  of  English,  can  give  little  help.  Yet  the  dif 
ferences  are  there.  The  various  Slavic  nationalities  are 
separated  by  distinctions  of  speech,  historical  experience, 
national  self-consciousness,  political  aims,  and  often  of 
religion.  In  American  communities  they  have  different 
churches,  societies,  newspapers  and  a  separate  social 
life.  Too  often  the  lines  of  cleavage  are  marked  by 
antipathies  and  old  animosities.  The  Pole  wastes  no 
love  on  the  Russian,  nor  the  Ruthenian  on  the  Pole,  and  a 
person  who  acts  in  ignorance  of  these  facts,  a  missionary 
for  instance,  or  a  political  boss,  or  a  trade-union  organizer, 
may  find  himself  in  the  position  of  a  host  who  should 
*  For  discussion  of  this  classification  see  page  247. 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

innocently  invite  a  Fenian  from  County  Cork  to  hobnob 
with  an  Ulster  Orangeman  on  the  ground  that  both 
were  Irish. 

This  great  group  of  the  Slavs  must  therefore  be  studied 
not  merely  as  a  whole  in  which  all  lesser  outlines  are 
blurred,  but  separately,  each  nationality  by  itself.  This 
is  even  more  true  with  respect  to  their  conditions  in 
Europe  than  in  this  country.  Moreover,  as  has  been 
said,  it  is  only  in  relation  to  their  European  back 
ground  that  they  can  be  understood  here.  And  the 
study  of  the  Slavic  world  is  full  of  fascination. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  SLAVIC  NATIONALITIES  IN  EUROPE 

Nationality  So  much  of  the  following  account  hinges  upon  ques- 
tions  relating  to  the  racial  and  political  conditions  of  the 
Slavs  that  it  may  be  a  convenience  to  some  readers  to 
have  a  certain  small  measure  of  preliminary  information 
brought  together  to  form  a  background. 

First,  as  to  the  question  of  Slavic  nationality.  The 
idea  of  nationality  is  itself  a  complex  one.  It  is  far  from 
being  identical  with  that  of  the  political  unit  (the  state 
or  nation),  or  with  the  purely  physical  conception  of 
race.  Three  factors  at  least  enter  into  it:  community 
of  blood  evidenced  by  physical  likeness,  community  of 
language,  and  community  of  culture  and  ideals.* 

(i)  Physical  The  first  of  these,  racial  kinship  in  the  strict  sense, 
involves  anthropological  questions  too  intricate  for  dis 
cussion  here.  All  of  the  so-called  races  of  Europe  are 
clearly  much  mixed.  Nevertheless,  each  of  them  gen 
erally  has  certain  minor  facial  and  other  characteristics 
which,  though  not  of  scientific  value,  and  far  from  uni 
versal,  yet  seem  to  constitute  a  type  in  a  popular  sense. 
So  too  with  the  Slavs.  Although  Professor  Ripley  in 
his  "Races  of  Europe"  calls  them  "physically  an  off 
shoot  of  the  great  Alpine  race  of  central  Europe,"  of 
which  we  may  take  the  southern  Frenchman  or  the  north 
ern  Italian  as  the  type,  they  are  far  from  a  pure  or  uni 
form  race.  Deniker  indeed  says  that  it  is  as  useless  to 
seek  a  Slav  type  as  a  Latin  or  Teutonic  one.f  Dolicho 
cephalic  and  brachycephalic,  tall  and  short,  light  and 

*  An  interesting  discussion  of  this  will  be  found  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Professor  Auerbach's  "Les  Races  et  les  Nationali- 
tes  en  1'Autriche-Hongrie." 

t  Deniker,  "The  Races  of  Man,"  page  345. 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  II 

dark,  all  varieties  are  present.  Their  intermixture  goes 
back  indefinitely  far  into  the  mists  of  prehistoric  eras,  but 
in  historical  times  also  the  inheritance  of  the  Slavs  has 
been  complicated  by  exchange  of  blood  with  their  va 
rious  neighbors.  Thus  they  have  contributed  a  large 
though  unmeasurable  amount  to  German  stock,  and  have 
themselves  received  in  turn  considerable  contributions 
from  Germans  and  others. 

Yet  amid  all  these  complicated  variations  there  gradu-  The  Slavic 
ally  forms  in  the  mind  of  the  observer  what  is  felt  to  be 
a  type,  much  as  a  composite  photograph  is  made  up  by 
the  merging  of  many  impressions  on  the  sensitive  plate. 
This  type,  as  it  has  shaped  itself  in  my  mind,  is  short, 
thick-set  anclstocky,  rather  than  the  reverse ;  not  grace 
ful  nor  light  in  mofion.  The  face  is  broad,  with  wide- 
seiT  eyes  "and  marked  cheek-bones;  the  nose  broad  and 
snub  rather  than  chiseled  or  aquiline,  the  forehead 
rather  lowering,  the  expression  ranging  from  sullen  to 
serene  but  seldom  animated  or  genial.  The  eyes  are 
of  a  distinctive  shade,  grey  inclining  to  blue.  One 
ofterfsees  these  honest  grey  eyes  in  the  dark-faced,  dark- 
haired  Croatian s  or  Bosnians,  as  well  as  in  the  blonder 
northerners.  The  ^ajr^in  my  typical  Slav,  is  light  in 
chiLcUaaody  though  never  the  pure  flaxen  of  the  Scandi 
navian  ;  with  added  years  it  turns  to  a  deep  brown,  dark 
ening  gradually  through  successive  ash-brown  shades. 
The  whole  suggestion  is  of  strength,  trustworthiness,  and 
a  certain  stolidity,  until  excitement  or  emotion  lights 
up  the  naturally  rather  unexpressive  features.  This 
picture  is  based  upon  personal  opportunities  for  obser 
vation,  which  have  included  little  acquaintance  with 
Russians.  It  seems  to  me  to  agree  fairly  well  with  that 
of  other  observers.* 

*  My  attempt  at  a  portrait  may  be  compared  with  Professor 
Steiner's,  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of  his  interesting  book,  "On  the 
Trail  of  the  Immigrant,"  and  with  the  excellent  photographs 
by  Mr.  Lewis  Hine,  reproduced  herewith.  There  are  some  ex 
cellent  types  in  the  pictures  accompanying  Miss  Grace  Abbott's 
article  on  the  Bulgarians  of  Chicago  in  Charities  and  the  Com 
mons,  Jan.  9,  1909. 


12  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

(2)  Com-  Turning  to  the  second  point,  community- of  language, 

we  find  the  situation  simpler.  The  Slavic  languages 
form  a  well-marked  family,  clearly  related  to  one  another. 
The  people  who  speak  these  languages  consider  themselves 
and  are  considered  by  others  as  Slavs;  those  who  do 
nbt  speak  them  cannot  easily  find  any  other  test  either 
to  prove  or  in  some  cases  to  disprove  Slavic  affiliations. 
A  common  language  implies,  first,  local  proximity  either 
past  or  present;  second,  some  degree  at  least  of  common 
history;  and  third,  it  means  a  continuing  possibility 
of  intercourse — in  modern  times,  of  intercourse  even 
apart  from  all  except  literary  contact.  It  is  likely,  at 
least,  to  imply  also  a  considerable  measure  of  community 
of  ideas  and  ideals.  Furthermore,  it  facilitates  inter 
marriage,  if  the  prime  necessity  of  proximity  be  present, 
and  so  constantly  works  toward  fusion  and  physical 
uniformity. 

Speech  as  a       Thus,  language  is  generally,  for  all  practical  purposes, 
criterion  of       ,       ,  *J      °       .  .    '  -          .         v  . 

nationality      "ie  best  and  sufficient  criterion  of  nationality;   a  rule, 

however,  to  which  the  Jews  form  an  interesting  ex 
ception.  In  Austria  and  Hungary,  with  their  hetero 
geneous  population,  it  is  for  the  most  part  regarded 
as  the  test,  and  national  feeling  so  rages  that  it  invades 
even  the  domain  of  the  census  inquiry  as  to  language. 
In  Austria,  the  Umgangsprache,  or  language  of  ordinary 
intercourse,  is  asked  for.  This  form  of  the  question 
tends  to  swamp  out  small  minorities,  unless  where  now 
and  then  national  zeal  overleaps  the  barriers  and,  for  in 
stance,  causes  an  individual  to  register  himself  as  the  only 
person  in  a  locality  using  a  given  language  in  ordinary 
intercourse!  One  must  suppose  he  talks  a  great  deal 
to  himself. 

In  Hungary  the  form  of  the  question  is  altered,  and 
the  "mother  tongue"  is  asked  for,  but  as  it  is  expressly 
provided  that  a  man  may  select  what  tongue  he  chooses, 
and  as  heavy  pressure  is  exerted  upon  every  one  to  count 
himself  a  Magyar,  the  results  doubtless  underrate  all 
non-Magyar  elements.  In  any  case  the  data  as  to  Ian- 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  13 

guage  do  not  reveal  the  strength  of  the  Hebrew  element, 
which  feels  itself  and  is  felt  to  be  a  markedly  distinct 
group.  Here  the  rubric  Israelite,  in  the  data  as  to  re 
ligious  confession,  gives  the  desired  information  except 
for  baptized  Jews.  How  confused  is  the  situation,  is 
suggested  by  the  answer  to  a  census  inquiry  quoted  by 
Boeckh,  "My  mother  tongue  is  Polish,  also  Hebrew, 
also  German,  as  happens  to  be  required."* 

The  Slavic  languages  belong  to  the  great  Indo-Ger-  The  Slavic 
manic  or  Aryan  linguistic  family.  If  we  divide  this  fam-  languages 
ilTWEo~mne~groups,  as  follows:  (i)  Indian  (Hindi,  etc.), 
(2)  Iranian  (Persian,  etc.),  (3)  Armenian,  (4)  Hellenic 
(Greek,  etc.),  (5)  Illyrian  (Albanian,  etc.),  (6)  Italic 
(Latin,  modern  Romance  languages,  Roumanian,  etc.), 
(7)  Keltic  (Welsh,  Irish,  Gaelic,  Breton,  etc.),  (8)  Slavo- 
Baltic,  (9)  Germanic  (Scandinavian  languages,  German, 
Dutch,  English,  etc.),  the  Slavic  belong  to  the  eighth. 
This  includes  the  Lettic  or  Baltic  languages  as  well  as 
the  Slavic.  Within  the  Slavic  division  the  existing 
languages  are  many,  even"  if  we  do  not  count  dead 
TalTguages  like  the  Church  Slavonic  now  used  only  in 
church  rituals. 

Their  degrees  of  relationship  do  not  correspond  to  the  Their  rela- 
present  geographical  situation  of  the  different  peoples;  tionships 
on  fKe~  contrary,  one  great  linguistic  group  includes  the 
languages  of  the  Russians  and  of  the  three  South  Slav 
nationalities — Bulgarians,   Servo-Croatians  and  Sloven 
ians,   while  another  contains  those  of  the  Bohemians, 
the  Slovaks  and  the  Poles,  who,  although  neighbors  of 
the  Russians,  are  less  nearly  related  to  them  in  speech 
than  are  the  distant  Slovenians,  f 

*  Compare  Boeckh:  "  Die  statistische  Bedeutung  der  Volks- 
sprache  als  Kennzeichen  der  Nationalitat."  Berlin,  1866. 

t  A  table  showing  relationships  of  Aryan  languages  may  be 
found  in  Edmonds'  "Introduction  to  Comparative  Philology 
for  Classical  Students."  See  also  Morfill:  "Slavonic  Literature," 
page  264,  and  Safafik:  "Geschichte  der  Slavischen  Sprache 
und  Literatur  nach  Allen  Mundarten, "  pages  4  and  5. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  chief 
Slavic  lan 
guages 


The  chief  Slavic  languages  are: 


Russian  : 


Great  Russian 
Little  Russian 

(Ruthenian,  Ukrainian) 
c.  White  Russian 
Bulgarian 
Servo-Croatian 
Slovenian 


II. 


5.  Polish 

6.  Bohemian 

7.  Slovak 


Richness  of 
grammati 
cal  forms 


There  are  many  dialectic  groups  within  those  named, 
but  all  that  are  given  in  the  table  doubtless  deserve  to 
rank  as  languages.  All  of  these  languages  are  elaborate, 
highly  inflected  tongues,  even  more  so  than  Greek  and 
Latin,  which  they  resemble  in  many  ways.  Some  of 
them  even  retain  quantity  as  well  as  accent,  which  makes 
them  especially  fitted  for  singing  or  for  quantitative 
verse  like  the  classic.*  As  regards  declensional  forms 
Bulgarian  is  an  exception  in  having  almost  entirely  lost 
its  cases.  Bohemian,  with  seven  cases,  three  numbers 
(the  dual  being  by  no  means  wholly  absent),  and  three 
grammatical  genders  (besides  in  some  cases  different 
forms  for  animate  and  inanimate  objects),  is  certainly 
not  simple.  The  adjective  is  declined,  as  well  as  the 
noun,  and  takes  a  different  form  if  in  the  predicate.  The 
verbs  too  are  very  difficult,  having  elaborate  iterative, 
frequentative  and  similar  variations.  On  the  other 
hand  the  spelling  is  absolutely  logical,  and  an  unerring 
guide  to  the  pronunciation,  and  the  accent  falls  uni 
formly  on  the  first  syllable.  Russian,  on  the  contrary, 
has  a  varying  accentuation,  impossible  to  predict,  and  a 
complicated  orthography. 

Alphabets  Slavic  languages  are  made  to  seem  much  more  remote 

and  spelling  from  ug  than  they  reaiiy  are,  by  the  fact  that  some 

of  them,  namely   Russian,  Servian  and   Bulgarian,  are 
*  Cf.  Safafik,  page  39. 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  15 

written  in  ja  different  alphabet,  while  others,  like  the 
Bohemian,  use  so-called  diacritical  marks,  or,  like  the 
Polish,  employ  different  combinations  of  letters  than  ours 
to  represent  certain  sounds.  Cz  is  a  no  more  unreason 
able  sign  than  ch  to  express  the  same  sound;  but  like 
any  convention,  it  needs  to  be  explained  to  be  under 
stood.  Another  puzzling  characteristic  of  spelling  is  the 
frequent  omission  of  the  vague  vowel  sound  which  goes 
with  a  liquid  in  such  words  as  trn  (thorn),  srb  (serb). 
The  Croatian  singer  Trnina  has  recognized  this  by 
spelling  her  name  for  our  benefit  with  an  e. 

This  unfamiliar  look  of  many  Slavic  words  is  due  in 
part,  as  has  been  said,  merely  to  unfamiliar  systems  of 
spelling,  but  it  is  not  that  only.  It  is  a  Slavic  peculiarity 
tojDrefer  to  have  a  compound  consonantal  sound  pre 
cede  rather  than  follow  the  vowel — to  say  brada  instead 
of  the  cognate  barba,  mleka  rather  than  milk  or  milch, 
Igati  rather  than  lugen,  while  we  prefer  the  contrary.* 
But  besides  this,  the  Slavic  tongue  easily  combines 
consonants  which  we  cannot  manage  together,  just  as 
we  can  say  sixths  and  not  think  it  difficult,  while  to 
almost  any  other  nationality  it  is  literally  inspeakable. 

I  am  convinced  that  this  unpronounceable  appearance  Difficulty  of 
of  many  Slavic  words,  and  especially  of  proper  names,  ^o^^bar" 
really  sets  up  no  small  barrier  to  acquaintance.     It  has  rier 
an  actual  psychological  effect  on  many  minds,  awaking 
a  sense  not  only  of  strangeness  but  of  impatient  rejec 
tion,   as  if  choking  food  were  offered  one.     The  Pole 
or  Ruthenian  in  America  has  more  difficulty  than  the 
Italian  or  Jew  in  handing  on  his  name  unaltered  to  his 
children,  especially  if  it  be  a  long  or  difficult  one,  and  not 
only  employers  but  sometimes  even  teachers  are  guilty 
of  the  barbarism  of  arbitrarily  making  over  or  replacing 
a  name  that  strikes  them  as  uncouth  or  troublesome. 

As  to  the  third  element  in  nationality,  community  of  (3)  Corn- 
culture  and  ideals,  the  question  will  be  discussed  later  mYnit>r  of 

culture 
in  connection  with  the  question  of  so-called  panslavism. 

*  Cf.  Safafik,  page  37. 


i6 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Estimate  of 
numbers 


The  early 
settlement 
of  the  Slavs 
in  Europe 


Subsequent 
loss  of 
territory 


If  the  main  living  Slavic  languages  are  some  ten  in 
number,  how  widespread  is  their  use?  In  other  words, 
what  are  the  numbers  and  location  of  the  main  Slavic 
nationalities?  It  is  not  possible  to  give  a  perfectly 
precise  answer,  but  Komarow,  a  Russian  authority, 
offers  interesting  estimates  (see  Table  i)  as  to  the 
numbers  of  Slavs  in  different  national  groups  and 

/different  geographical  divisions. 
This  table  shows  a  total  of  nearly  98,500,000  Slavs 
in  Europe  (out  of  a  total  European  population  in  1900 
of  some  398,000,000),  and  a  grand  total  for  all  parts  of 
the  world,  of  101,724,000  Slavs.  The  Slays  are  thus 
almost  a  quarter  of  the  total  population  of  Europe,  and 
if  we  consider  not  numbers  but  area  their  relative  im 
portance  is  still  greater,  as  may  readily  be  seen  on  Map  I. 
If  a  line  be  drawn  north  from  the  head  of  the  Adriatic 
they  occupy  most  of  the  territory  lying  to  the  east  of  it. 

The  Slavs  are  not  only  a  numerous  and  widespread 
but  an  ancient  European  population.  From  an  un 
known  date  they  have  been  moving  westward  in  Europe, 
often  in  the  wake  of  more  aggressive  and  warlike  peoples.* 
Early  in  the  fifth  century  they  seem  to  have  reached  the 
Elbe  to  the  north,  and  the  country  near  the  head  of  the 
Adriatic  to  the  south.  In  the  sixth  century  they  pene 
trated  into  Italy  and,  further  east,  settled  in  Greece  and 
the  Balkan  country.  By  the  end  of  the  seventh  century 
we  hear  of  them  in  Bavaria,  Thuringia,  Mecklenburg, 
Brandenburg  and  Pomerania.f 

The  Slavs  indeed  in  early  times  occupied  much  terri 
tory  which  they  afterward  lost.  Slavic  tongues  were 
spoken  at  Kiel,  Liibeck,  Magdeburg,  Halle,  Berlin, 
Dresden,  Salzburg,  Vienna.  Slavs  were  in  Oldenburg, 
Mecklenburg  and  Holstein  to  the  north,  almost  as  far 

*Cf.  Leger's  "History  of  Austria-Hungary  from  the  Earliest 
Time  to  the  year  1889,"  pages  25,  26,  32. 

t  Pomerania  still  preserves  a  form  of  its  Slavic^  name  (po, 
upon,  more,  the  sea).  Cf.  Latin  mare.  It  is  interesting  to  note 
the  related  name  of  Pomorski  today  given  to  the  Slavs  of  the 
Adriatic  shore. 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE 


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THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  19 

as  the  Rhine  on  the  west,  and  in  Bavaria  in  the  south. 
Leipzig  takes  its  name  from  Lipa,  the  Slavic  name  for 
lime  or  linden,  the  national  sacred  tree.  Place  names  in 
itz,  zig,  a  (as  for  instance  Jena),  dam  (like  Potsdam)  are 
Slavic.*  In  Germany  proper  all  that  is  now  visible  of 
the  Slavic  population  which  once  occupied  nearly  the 
whole  of  North  Germany  is  (outside  of  the  conquered 
Polish  territory)  names  of  places,  family  names,  and 
little  islands  of  Slavic  folk  like  the  Wends  or  Sorbs  of  the 
Lausitzf  (Lusatia),  whom  Komarow  estimates  at  136,000. 
The  Polabish  people  who  once  dwelt  on  the  ElbeJ  have 
vanished,  speech  and  all,  though  the  speech  was  not  en 
tirely  extinct  in  the  early  nineteenth  century.  The  Ger 
mans,  expanding  eastward,  killed  out,  forced  back  or 
overlaid  the  old  Slavic  population,  and  a  process  of  in 
tentional  Germanization  was  begun  which  is  perhaps 
at  its  height  today  in  the  efforts  to  depolonize  the  Ger 
man  territory  which  once  was  Poland. 

Nowhere  do  the  Germans,  whose  role  in  history  is  for  Teutonic- 
the  most  part  so  noble,  appear  in  such  a  sorry  light  as  in 
their  contact  with  their  Slavic  neighbors,  whether  we 
think  of  the  Teutonic  Knights  in  Slavic  Prussia,  §  of 
the  persecutors  of  the  Bohemian  Hussites,  or  of  the 
present  policy  of  Prussia  in  whipping  Polish  school 
children  for  saying  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  their  own  lan 
guage.  ||  Wherever  Slav  and  Teuton  have  been  in  con 
tact  there  has  been  friction,  and  the  softer  Slav  has 
as  a  rule  been  the  sufferer. 

Since  the  Slavs  are  and  so  long  have  been  thus  nu 
merous  and  widespread  in  Europe,  the  question  suggests 

*Cf.  Ripley:  "Races  of  Europe,"  page  239;  Morfill:  "Slavonic 
Literature,"  page  3. 

f  The  name  is  derived  from  a  Slavic  word  for  marsh.  Cf. 
Morfill,  pages  34,  35,  247  ff. 

I  The  Slavic  name  for  this  river  is  Labe.  The  name  means 
dwellers  on  the  Elbe. 

§  For  a  Polish  version  of  this  period  see  Sienkiewicz's  spirited 
novel,  "The  Knights  of  the  Cross." 

II  See  the  Press,  organ  of  the  Polish  Newspaper  Association  of 
America,  Milwaukee,  April  i,  1907. 


20 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Slavic 

national 

character 


Lack  of 
aggressive- 


Lack  of 
cohesion 


itself,  why  then  have  they  played  in  history  a  part  so 
much  less  prominent  than  the  Latin  and  Teutonic 
peoples? 

Part  of  the  answer  may  be,  as  has  just  been  suggested, 
Slavic  national  character.  I  feel  a  profound  scepticism, 
however,  as  to  the  value  of  generalizations  in  regard  to 
the  character  of  nations  or  races,  more  especially  if  it  is 
assumed  that  such  characters  are  inherited  and  un 
changeable.  Group  types  are  perhaps  quite  as  much 
products  of  social  development  and  imitation,  deter 
mined  by  historical  causes  economic  and  other,  as  they 
are  the  expression  of  innate  qualities.  Moreover,  gener 
alizations  as  to  Slavs  are  particularly  dangerous,  in 
that  they  relate  not  to  any  single  national  unit  but  to  a 
vast  group  denned  largely  by  kinship  of  speech.  As 
in  discussions  of  the  Teuton,  they  have  their  place, 
but  too  often  the  person  making  statements  as  to 
Slavs  has  in  mind  some  special  group  with  which  he  is 
best  acquainted,  or  which  is  in  point  for  the  moment. 
I  frequently  find  that  by  "the  Slav"  is  meant  the  Rus 
sian.  Now  generalizations  about  Russians  are  them 
selves  sufficiently  hazardous  at  best;  certainly  they 
should  not  be  lightheartedly  applied  to  all  Slavs,  from 
most  of  whom  Russians  in  some  ways  diverge  widely. 

In  any  case,  it  appears  to  be  true  that  Slavic 
peoples  have  not  been  fitted  to  play  a  conspicuous  part 
in  the  era  of  bloody  struggle  which  Europe  has  passed 
through,  during  the  feudal  period  and  since.  In  spite 
of  the  personal  bravery  which  has  made  Slavs  famous 
fighters,  from  the  Polish  Legion  to  the  Cossacks  of  the 
Ukraine  or  the  Croats  of  the  military  confines,  they  seem 
to  lack  some  element  of  aggressiveness,  something  of 
the  instinct  to  retaliate.  The  phrase  "Das  Tauben-blut 
der  Slaven"  (the  dove  blood  of  the  Slav),  which  appar 
ently  originated  with  the  poet  Kolldr,  owes  its  currency 
to  its  element  of  truth. 

With  the  exception  of  the  steady  expansion  of  the 
Russian  empire  and  the  extension  of  Poland  in  its  era 


UNIV.  or 
CALIFORNIA 


II 

|b 


N 


lig 

<J  M 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  21 

of  political  greatness,  the  Slavs  have  not  shown  much 
gift  for  state-building.  They  appear  to  be  deficient  in 
the  faculty  for  cohesion  and  leadership.  Only  within 
the  smallest  social  unit  has  Slavic  political  genius  evolved 
stable  forms  of  organization  and  mutual  social  control. 
The  Russian  communal  village  or  mir,  the  South  Slav 
zadruga,  or  communal  household,  and  bratstvo  (literally 
brotherhood),  or  clan,  are  developments  of  the  very 
greatest  interest.*  But  the  various  early  agglomera 
tions  of  territory  and  power  under  Slavic  rulers  like 
Samo  or  Svatopluk  or  Boleslav  of  Bohemia,  which  for  a 
time  seemed  to  promise  a  Slavic  empire,  soon  fell  to 
pieces  of  themselves,  or  were  overpowered,  or  else  were 
absorbed  by  the  chances  of  dynastic  inheritance.  His 
torians  are  full  of  references  to  the  lack  of  Slavic  cohe 
sion.  Seton- Watson, t  for  instance,  says  M  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  Slavs  have  throughout  history  shown  a  fissile 
and  centrifugal  tendency,  and  thus  the  mysterious  figures 
of  Samo  and  Svatopluk  are  the  only  Slav  empire  builders 
till  we  reach  the  days  of  Peter  the  Great.  Ottocar  of 
Bohemia  and  Ivan  the  Terrible  are  possible  exceptions." 

But  quite  apart  from  any  supposed  national  charac-   External 
teristics,    there   have   been   three   powerful   reasons   for  ^vision 
backwardness  and  disunion  in  Slavic  lands. 

For  one  thing,  the  Slavic  peoples  are,  as  may  readily  be  (i)  The 
seen  on  Map  I  (page  18),  separated  into  two  groups  by  a 
strip  of  non-Slavic  population  forced  between  the  Rus-  northern 
sians,  Poles  and  Bohemians  to  the  north,  and  the  Slove- 
nians,  Servo-Croatians  and  Bulgarians  to  the  south.  This 
non-Slavic  wedge  is  German  in  the  west,  extending  in  a 
solid  mass  through  the  Austrian  provinces  of  the  Tyrol, 
Styria,  Carinthia,  Upper  and  Lower  Austria  and  across 
into  Hungary  as  far  as  Pressburg  (Poszony).  Austria 
is,  indeed,  the  Eastern  Empire  (Oester  Reich)  of  the 
Teuton.  Where  the  German  population  ends  the 

*  For  the  zadruga  see  page  161 ;  for  the  bratstvo  see  the  book 
by.  Kratiss  on  the  customs  of  the  South  Slavs,  or  Mijatovich's 
books  on  Servia. 

t  Seton- Watson:  "Racial  Problems  in  Hungary,"  page  15. 


22 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


(2)  The 
schism  be 
tween  East 
and;  West 


Political 
and  literary 
results  of 
religious 
divergence 


Magyar  begins,  and  to  the  east  of  the  Magyars  lie  the 
Roumanians,  extending  across  to  the  Black  Sea.  The 
Slavs,  thus  held  apart,  have  been  by  this  fact  alone 
shut  off  from  the  possibility  of  forming  a  single  whole, 
or  of  wielding  an  influence  comparable  to  their  numbers. 

But  to  this  have  been  added  two  far  more  important 
historical  causes  which  have  tended  to  keep  Slavs  apart 
from  one  another  and  also  outside  of  the  main  current 
of  European  life. 

The  moral  watershed  between  East  and  West  ran 
through  the  Slavic  countries,  and  the  greater  part  of  the 
Slavs  found  themselves  on  the  eastern  side,  looking  to 
Byzantium  for  light,  as  those  of  the  West  looked  to  Rome. 
To  this  day  Russians,  Bulgarians  and  Servians  are,  taking 
them  as  a  whole,  Greek  Orthodox,  while  on  the  other  hand 
Poles,  Bohemians  and  Croatians  are  Roman  Catholics* 
Safafik,  writing  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  counted  about 
35,500,000  Greek  Orthodox,  18,500,000  Roman  Catholic, 
and  1,250,000  Protestant.  The  strength  of  the  odium 
theologicum  is  notorious,  and  this  difference  in  ecclesias 
tical  allegiance  has  been  a  cause  of  contention  and  mutual 
aversion  throughout  Slavic  history. 

Moreover,  this  inclusion  of  the  major  part  of  the  Slavs 
in  the  Eastern  sphere  of  influence  had  political  and 
literary  as  well  as  religious  results.  Byzantium  as  a 
centre  of  the  world  of  ideas  meant  something  very  differ 
ent  from  Rome;  something  much  less  vitalizing  and 
significant  for  the  future.  The  mere  fact  that  the 
Orthodox  Slavs  used  the  Cyrillic  or  Russian  alphabet' 
meant  a  real  barrier  between  them  and  the  West,  a 
serious  obstacle  to  the  interchange  of  ideas  with  Catholic 
Slavs,  and  to  knowledge  of  one  another's  literatures. 
The  Roman  Catholic  Slavs  used  either  the  Latin  charac 
ters  as  we  do  or  the  German  ones.  The  latter  are  still 
employed  by  the  Sorbs  in  Germany  and  till  about  1830 
were  used  by  the  Bohemians  also.  Polish  and  Bohemian 
books  intended  for  the  lowest  class  are  still  occasionally 
so  printed,  and  one  runs  across  old  Bohemians  who  can- 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  23 

not  read  Bohemian  except  in  German  print  and  script. 
Moreover,  the  Western  and  Catholic  nationalities  were 
in  touch  with  Frenchmen  and  Germans,  and,  along  the 
Adriatic  coast,  with  Italians,  and  were  constantly 
involved  in  the  politics  of  Western  Europe.  Thus  in  a 
second  way  the  Slavic  unit  was  split  in  two, — north  and 
scmth  by  an  alien  body  of  population,  east  and  west  by 
differences  of  religious,  political  and  literary  affiliation. 

A  third  and  most  important  factor  which  kept  the  (3)  Conflict 
Slavic  peoples  off  the  European  stage  and  delayed  their 
political  and  cultural  development  was  the  Tatar  and 
Turkish  invasions  against  which  their  countries  served 
as  a  set  of  buffer  states,  They  were  indeed,  with  Hun 
gary,  the  heroic  bulwark  of  Christendom,  and  in  the 
tremendous  struggle  great  bodies  of  them  were  submerged 
for  longer  or  shorter  periods.  Russia  was  not  freed  till 
1489  from  a  subjection  to  the  Tatars  which  had  lasted 
two  and  a  half  centuries.  Turkish  misrule  came  later 
and  lasted  longer.  The  Balkan  Slavs  suffered  under  it 
until  1878,  when  certain  provinces  were  freed,  Servia 
being  made  an  independent  kingdom,  Bulgaria  a  practi 
cally  independent  principality,  and  Montenegro  an 
independent  principality,  while  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina 
were  given  to  Austria- Hungary  to  administer.  Thus 
ended,  except  for  the  Slavs  of  Macedonia,  some  three 
centuries  of  Turkish  control  which,  so  far  as  opportunity 
for  progress  goes,  might  almost  be  eliminated  from  Slavic 
history. 

Even  countries  which  were  not  subjugated  were  al 
most  equally  handicapped  by  incessant  border  warfare. 
Poland  spent  much  of  her  best  blood  repulsing  the 
Tatars  and  Turks,  and  as  late  as  1681,  under  her  gallant 
king  Sobieski,  was  delivering  Vienna  from  its  Turkish 
besiegers.  Croatia  in  all  its  border  parts  was  organized 
as  the  so-called  "Military  Confines,"  and  its  people 
were  withdrawn  from  normal  civil  life.  This  situation 
was  not  put  a  final  end  to  until  1881. 

In  almost  every  case  there  was  an  exhausting  drain 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Slavic 
unity 


Rise  of  na 
tionalism 


on  the  vital  forces  of  the  Slavic  peoples,  and  a  most 
demoralizing  degree  of  uncertainty.  A  farmer  does  not 
need  to  have  his  barns  burned  every  harvest  time  in 
order  to  lose  his  interest  in  expensive  improvements. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  how  the  figure  of  the  raiding 
Turk  pervades  the  different  folk  literatures,  even  the 
Slovak.  All  this  border  warfare  and  political  confusion 
militated  against  the  growth  of  capital  and  the  develop 
ment  of  architecture  and  city  life,  and  in  general  against 
the  evolution  of  modern  societies,  non-feudal,  industrial 
and  enlightened.  Meanwhile,  sheltered  behind  the 
living  barrier  of  Slavs  and  Magyars,  the  rest  of  Europe 
was  developing  and  progressing. 

Not  only  have  Slavic  peoples  suffered  from  conflict 
with  external  oppressors ;  they  have  also  been  at  various 
points  in  bitter  conflict  one  with  another.  The  Poles 
have  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Russians,  the  Ruthenians  at 
the  hands  of  both  Russians  and  Poles.  Croatians  and 
Servians  have  rubbed.  Yet  on  the  whole  there  has  been, 
to  a  rather  surprising  degree,  a  sense  of  a  certain  unity 
among  the  different  Slavic  nationalities.  Long  before 
modern  ideas  of  nationalism  had  awakened  there  were 
evidences  of  some  measure  of  this  "consciousness  of 
kind,"  and  early  Slavic  history  has  some  interesting 
examples,  already  alluded  to,  of  more  or  less  successful 
efforts  toward  political  union,  under  Samo,  "  King  of  the 
Slavs,"  in  the  seventh  century,  Svatopluk,  King  of 
"  Great  Moravia, "  in  the  ninth  century,  and  in  the  tenth 
century  under  Boleslav  the  Great  of  Poland  as  king  of 
the  Slavs.* 

But  it  was  with  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century 
that  national  feeling  in  its  modern  form  awakened  under 
the  stimulus  of  the  ruthless  way  in  which  national  de 
marcations  were  disregarded  and  national  organisms 
cut  up  or  forced  under  the  rule  of  hated  and  alien 
powers.  Germany,  stirred  by  Fichte  to  rise  against 
Napoleon ;  Greece  and  Italy  achieving  their  independence ; 

*  Leger:  "  History  of  Austria-Hungary,"  pages  28-29,  45~49- 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  25 

—these  are  the  stock  examples.  But  Poland,  when  her 
peasants  with  their  poor  scythes  went  out  under  Kos- 
ciuszko  against  her  invaders  in  1794,  is  an  earlier  in 
stance. 

The  claims  of  national  feeling  grew  more  insistent  Linguistic 
with  the  passage  of  time,  and  the  revolutionary  year  g^v 
1848  brought  to  vivid  expression  not  only  demands  for  proche- 
the  constitutional  rights  of  states  but  passionate  yearn-  ments 
ings  for  the  deeper  rights  of  nationalities.  There  was  a 
renascence  of  languages  that  had  been  relegated  to  the 
peasant  hut  and  the  nursery;  an  outburst  of  national 
literatures.  Along  with  a  revival  of  the  Bohemian, 
Slovak,  and  Illyrian  (or  South  Slav)  languages  came 
also  the  desire  for  a  Slavic  rapprochement,  the  so- 
called  panslav  movement,  the  way  for  which  had  been 
prepared  by  poets  and  thinkers  for  years  previous.  It 
is  interesting  to  note  that  even  as  early  as  1713  the  phi 
losopher  Leibnitz  said  to  Peter  the  Great,  "We  are  both 
of  Slavic  ancestry.  You  have  wrested  the  world's 
mightiest  powers  from  barbarism,  and  I  have  founded  a 
realm  of  equal  extent.  The  originators  of  a  new  epoch, 
we  are  both  descendants  of  that  race  whose  fortunes 
none  can  foretell."*  This  sounds  like  an  anticipation 
of  Her'der's  prophecy,  in  his  "Ideas  on  the  Philosophy 
of  a  History  of  Mankind,"  that  a  great  future  lay  before 
the  Slavic  peoples,  an  era  of  territorial  expansion  and 
of  peaceful  devotion  to  arts  and  economic  progress. 

In  1848,  as  already  said,  the  growing  enthusiasm  for  The  Slav 
these  ideas  found  expression.     A  Slav  congress  met  in  Congresses 
Prague,  which,  to  the  vast  amusement  of  its  enemies,  sian  hege- 
found  it  necessary  to  confer   in  German    as  the  only  mony 
language  understood  by  all.     At  that  date  Russia  was 
the  only  independent  Slavic  state,  for  Poland  was  di 
vided  under  three  masters,  Bohemia  was  under  the  heel 
of  Austria,  and  the  other  Slavic  nationalities  under  one 
or  another  alien  rule.     Russia  was  thus  given  an  over 
powering  prestige  which  she  employed  to  turn  the  move- 

*  Quoted  in  Capek's  "The  Slovaks  of  Hungary,"  page  23. 


26 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Panslavism 


Russo- 
phobia 


Panslav 
ism.  as  a 
non-politi 
cal  ideal 


ment  to  her  own  advantage.  She  has  been  glad  to  as 
sume  the  title  and  rdle  of  "Protector  of  the  Slavs," 
and  was  lauded  as  such  by  different  Slavic  deputations 
at  the  Ethnographical  Congress  at  Moscow  in  1867. 
Especially  in  Balkan  affairs  this  has  strengthened  her 
influence. 

The  panslavic  trend  has  thus  become  to  a  greater  or  less 
degree  confused  with  a  tendency  to  look  to  Russia  as 
the  head  of  the  Slavic  family,  and  a  desire  for  political 
affiliation.  For  this  reason  the  Poles  have  held  markedly 
aloof  from  it,  and  governments  with  a  Slavic  minority 
among  their  people  have  made  it  a  bogey,  and  often  a 
very  convenient  one.  Thus  the  Magyars  choose  to  rep 
resent  all  nationalistic  efforts  of  the  Slovaks  as  pan 
slavic  agitation  and  treason.  Unfortunately  some  color 
was  lent  to  this  view  by  the  events  of  1848,  when  the 
Slovaks  welcomed  the  Russian  invaders  of  Hungary 
whom  Austria  had  called  in  against  the  Magyars  under 
Kossuth, — a  policy  since  bitterly  regretted  by  Slovaks 
themselves,  who  now  recognize  that  their  lot  is  indis- 
solubly  bound  up  with  that  of  Hungary,  and  who  ask 
only  for  the  just  treatment  of  all  citizens  at  the  hands 
of  the  ruling  race,  the  Magyars. 

The  Magyar  fear  of  Russian  conspiracy  often  leads  to 
laughable  results.  I  had  just  heard  that  it  was  only 
by  an  accident  that  my  girl  traveling  companion  and  I 
had  escaped  being  arrested  as  Russian  spies,  when  I 
was  amused  to  find  in  a  book  of  travels,  "Across  the 
Carpathians,"  published  some  fifty  years  before,  an 
account  of  the  actual  imprisonment  on  the  same  charge 
of  two  equally  innocent  English  lady  tourists. 

In  reality,  so-called  panslavism,  as  voiced,  for  in 
stance,  by  its  great  apostle,  the  poet  Kollar,  is  a  striving 
for  a  non-political  and  purely  spiritual  union.  In  an 
essay  written  in  1837  he  says,  "For  the  first  time  in 
many  centuries,  the  scattered  Slavs  regard  themselves 

once  more  as  one  great  people The  Slav  nation 

strives  to  return  to  its  original  unity."  But  the  common 


THE    SLAVIC    NATIONALITIES    IN    EUROPE  27 

bond  "does  not  consist  in  a  political  union  of  all  Slavs, 
nor  in  demagogic  agitation  against  the  various  govern 
ments  and  rulers,  since  this  could  only  produce  confu 
sion  and  misfortune.  Literary  reciprocity  can  subsist 
in  the  case  of  a  nation  which  is  under  more  than  one 
sceptre  and  is  divided  into  several  states.  Reciprocity 
is  also  possible  in  the  case  of  a  nation  which  has  several 
religions  and  confessions,  and  where  differences  of  writ 
ing,  of  climate  and  territory,  of  manners  and  customs 
prevail.  It  is  not  dangerous  to  the  temporal  authorities 
and  rulers,  since  it  leaves  frontiers  and  territories  un 
disturbed,  is  content  with  the  existing  order  of  things, 
and  adapts  itself  to  all  forms  of  government  and  to  all 

grades  of  civil  life." "Under  alien  non-Slav  rulers, 

so  long  as  they  are  tolerant,  the  weaker  Slav  races  find 
better  guarantees  and  security  for  the  independence 
and  survival  of  their  language,  which  under  the  rule 
of  some  more  powerful  Slav  race  would,  according  to  the 
laws  of  attraction,  be  entirely  absorbed,  or  would  at 
least  commingle  and  finally  vanish  away."* 

Kollar's  program,  as  stated  by  Mr.  Seton- Watson, 
was:  book  depots  in  the  various  capitals,  free  public 
libraries,  chairs  of  Slav  languages  and  literatures,  a 
general  Slav  literary  review,  the  reform  of  Slav  spelling, 
comparative  grammars  and  dictionaries,  collections  of 
songs,  proverbs  and  folklore. 

In  some  such    shape  as   this   the    idea   lives   in   the  Political 
minds  of  many  Slavs  to-day.     Again,  it  takes  political  Panslavism 
form  and  is  a  powerful  force  cautiously  reckoned  with 
by  continental  diplomacy.     The  Balkans,  Servia,  Monte 
negro,   Bosnia,   Croatia,  all  Slavic   Hungary,   all  Slavic 
Austria,  Poland,  Russia  are  more  or  less  permeated  by 
it.     It  is  a  current  which  often  complicates  economic 
and  constitutional  movements  and  groupings  in  all  these 
regions,  and  the  happy  direction  of  its  energy  is  one  of 
the  great  problems  of  European  statesmanship. f 

*  Kollar,  J. :  "Uber  die  literarische  Wechselseitigkeit," 
quoted  by  Seton- Watson,  page  55. 

t  See  Panslavism  in  the  Bibliography. 


CHAPTER  III 


Importance 
of  Austria- 
Hungary  for 
Slavic  im 
migration 


Geographi 
cal  con 
ditions 


CONDITIONS  IN  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

For  the  study  of  Slavic  immigration  to  the  United 
States,  the  centre  of  interest  is  Austria-Hungary,  not 
Russia  as  might  be  supposed,  although  only  17  or  18  per 
cent  of  all  Slavs  are  subjects  of  Emperor  Francis  Joseph, 
while  over  70  per  cent  are  subjects  of  the  Czar.  The 
former  country  sends  us  the  great  bulk  of  our  Slavic 
immigrants.  During  the  decade  1899-1908  nearly  sev 
enty  out  of  a  hundred  of  them  came  to  us  from  Austria- 
Hungary  and  only  twenty-five  in  a  hundred  from  the 
Russian  empire. 

Not  only  this,  but  the  different  Slavic  nationalities 
are  so  placed  that  all  of  them,  except  Bulgarians  and 
Russians  are  to  be  found  within  the  boundaries  of  Austria- 
Hungary^  Poles,  Ruthenians,  Slovaks,  Croatians,  Ser 
vians,  as  well  as  Bohemians  are  subjects  of  the  dual 
monarchy.  A  study  of  the  stream  that  comes  to  us 
thence  is  therefore  a  study  of  a  part  at  least  of  every 
Slavic  immigrant  group  except  two, — and  those  of  minor 
numerical  importance, — and  an  investigation  of  Slavic 
emigration  from  Austria-Hungary  should  give  us  a 
fair  basis  for  the  discussion  of  the  Slavic  movement  to 
America.  The  remainder  of  the  first  part  of  this  book 
is  confined  substantially  to  that  part  of  the  Slavic 
world. 

Geographically  as  well  as  politically,  Austria,  to  con 
sider  her  first,  is  very  complicated.*  With  no  natural 
centre  or  frontier,  she  is  made  up  of  a  stretch  of  adjoining 

*  Physical  features  are  shown  on  Map  IV,  opposite  page  35. 
See  also  the  Bibliography  under  the  titles  Austria-Hungary, 
Austria,  and  Hungary. 

28 


CONDITIONS    IN    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY  2Q 

territories  lying  like  a  wreath  almost  three-quarters  of 
the  way  around  Hungary,  which,  with  Croatia  and 
Bosnia,  is  set  like  a  kernel  within  this  embrace.  All  of 
the  northeastern  provinces  of  Austria, — Moravia,  Silesia, 
Galicia,  Bukowina, — are  bounded  to  the  south  by  the 
arc  of  the  Carpathian  range,  which  separates  them  from 
Hungary.  The  Carpathians  are  great  rounded  green 
hills  rather  than  mountains,  except  in  one  place  where 
the  peaks  of  the  High  Tatra,  with  their  romantic  crags 
and  lakes,  attract  pleasure  seekers  from  both  the  Hunga 
rian  and  the  Polish  (Galician)  sides. 

From  Vienna,  south  and  west,  the  country  is  broken 
by  complicated  Alpine  ranges  which  run  into  the  Swiss 
Alps  to  the  west  and  merge  to  the  south  in  the  Balkans, 
while  the  Julian  and  Dinaric  Alps  parallel  the  Adriatic 
shore.  Bohemia  and  Galicia  alone  of  the  Austrian  crown- 
lands  have  any  considerable  stretch  of  open,  level  land. 

Hungary  on  the  contrary,   apart  from  mountainous  Of  Hungary 
Transylvania   and  the  slopes  and  foothills  of  the  Car-  • 

pathians  which  bar  it  from  the  Austrian  provinces  to 
the  north,  is  a  great  fertile  plain  watered  by  the  Danube 
and  the  Theiss  which  flow  across  it. 

Politically,  the  dual  monarchy  isnothing  ...short  ^f*^    Political 

monstrosity!     The  relation  between  "Austria  and  Hun-  organization 
J  .  t  of  the  mon- 

gary  created  by  the  Ausgleich  of  1867  is  niuch  slighter  archy 

and  more  formal  than  is  perhaps  always  realized.  The 
same  ruler  is  emperor  of  the  one  country  and  king  of  the 
other.  To  speak  of  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  at  Budapest 
is  to  give  bitter  offence ;  there  he  is  king  only.  The  two 
countries  have  in  common  an  army  and  navy,  a  tariff, 
a  system  of  weights,  measures  and  coinage,  and  three 
ministers  (for  war,  foreign  affairs  and  finance) ,  and  their 
"delegations"  meet  to  arrange  common  affairs.  Out 
side  of  these  matters  they  stand  apart;  they  have  not 
even  a  legislature  in  common,  nor  the  same  money  nor 
post-office  system. 

Austria  herself  is  an  accidental  dynastic  agglomeration 
of  kingdoms,  archduchies,  duchies,  margravates  ana?  so 


CONDITIONS    IN    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY  31 

forth,  seventeen  "crownlands"  in  all,  which  the  house 
of  Habsburg  has  brought  together  as  an  inheritance. 
Tu  felix  Austria  nube. 

Hungary  proper  is  less  confusing,  since  the  only  dis 
tinct  divisions  are  the  former  principality  of  Transyl 
vania  or  Siebenburgen  (and  even  this  is  now  an  integral 
part  of  the  country),  and  the  important  Adriatic  port 
of  Fiume  which,  though  separated  from  her  other  terri 
tory  by  the  whole  width  of  Croatia,  belongs  to  Hungary, 
and  gives  her  her  only  outlet  by  sea.  The  "autono 
mous  kingdom"  of  Croatia-Slavonia,  under  an  elec 
tive  Ban  or  Governor,  is  united  to  Hungary  proper 
somewhat  as  Hungary  itself  is  united  to  Austria.  To 
gether  these  constitute  "the  lands  of  the  crown  of  Saint 
Stephen,"  or  the  Kingdom  of  Hungary. 

Add  to  all  this  the  provinces  of  Bosnia  and  Her 
zegovina,  which,  until  they  were  annexed  in  1908,  were 
still  nominally  under  Turkish  sovereignty. 

The  geographical  and  political  confusion  of  the  dual  Friction  be 
monarchy  is  insignificant  compared  with  the  confusion 
ofjtongues,  and  the  racial  or  national  conflicts  and  animosi-  __ 
tigswhich  divide"  it,  for  the  most  part  cutting  across  all 
political  and  administrative  lines.  In  Bohemia,  where 
the  national  conflict  is  perhaps  as  acute  as  anywhere  in 
Austria,  it  is  Bohemians  (Chekhs)  against  Germans.  To 
the  east  in  Galicia  (Austrian  Poland)  there  is  a  triple  tan 
gle  with  Poles,  Ruthenians  and  Jews.  Further  east  still 
in  the  Bukowina,  the  large  Roumanian  element  adds  to 
the  complexity.  In  the  northwest  there  is  the  Italian 
Tyrol,  and  an  actively  agitating  Italian  element  in 
Istria,  and  along  the  Dalmatian  shore,  and  above  all  in 
Trieste.  The  Slovenes,  who  form  the  bulk  of  the  popu 
lation  in  Carniola,  and  a  considerable  minority  at  least 
in  Styria,  Carinthia  and  the  Coast  Lands,  are  everywhere 
in  conflict  with  the  German  element,  whether  as  upper 
or  under  dog,  and  in  Trieste  with  the  Italians  as  well. 

In  Hungary  the  situation  is  even  worse  than  in  Austria, 
in  proportion  as  more  pressure  from  above  creates  an 


CONDITIONS    IN    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY  33 

intenser  national  reaction.  The  almost  3,000,000  Rou 
manians  in  and  about  Transylvania,  the  2,000,000 
Slovaks  in  the  Carpathian  highlands,  and  the  scattered 
German  populations  amounting  in  all  to  over  2,000,000, 
are  all  utterly  discontented  with  Magyar  treatment, 
which  too  often  amounts  to  arbitrary  and  cruel  per 
secution. 

In  Croatia,  with  a  population  racially  fairly  homo 
geneous,  religious  differences  and  diverse  political  as 
pirations  sometimes  make  trouble  between  Croatian s 
and  Servians  in  spite  of  their  common  blood  and  common 
language,  and  all  Croatia  is  in  a  constant  state  of  tension 
as  regards  Magyar  policy  and  practices.  These  mutual 
jealousies  and  antagonisms  would  seem  enough  without 
being  further  complicated  by  external  attractions  and 
repulsions — by  the  "  All-Deutsch "  movement  in  Aus 
tria  and  outside,  by  the  cry  of  "Italia  Irredenta,"  by  the 
panslav  tendencies  already  discussed,  by  Russian  and 
Servian  ambitions,  and  by  the  whole  Balkan  problem 
and  the  dream  of  a  federated  Slavic  state  to  include  all 
the  South  Slavs.* 

We  in  the  United  States  have  little  conception  of  Effects  of 
what  such  conflicts  mean.  Our  racial  problems  may  be 
worse;  at  any  rate  they  are  quite  different.  In  Austria 
and  Hungary  these  are  struggles  of  different  cultures, 
languages  (and  of  political  states  back  of  them),  to  win 
adherents  and  power.  Men  indignantly  repudiate  the 
use  of  languages  which  they  understand  perfectly  well, 
and  questions  of  the  language  of  school  instruction  en 
gage  the  most  impassioned  feelings.  Blood  has  been 
shed,  not  so  long  since,  in  riots  caused  by  the  determina 
tion  of  the  Germans  that  the  Italians  should  not  have  a 
university  at  Innsbruck,  nor  the  Chekhs  one  in  Brtinn. 
Even  questions  which  should  be  purely  scientific  are 
troubled  by  these  prepossessions  and  aims. 

The  awakening  of  nationalistic  feeling  has  done  im- 

*  Some  statistical  data  as  to  the  nationalities  of  Austria  and 
Hungary  are  given  in  Appendix  I,  page  429. 

3 


34  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

mense  good,  but  it  also  does  immense  harm.  The  good 
human  energy  wasted,  for  instance,  by  Germans  and 
Bohemians  in  merely  blocking  one  another  is  pitiable. 
All  this  not  only  narrows  and  embitters,  it  greatly  re 
tards  progress.  It  must  be  said,  however,  that  these 
questions  chiefly  interest  the  class  which  is  designated 
throughout  these  countries  as  "die  Intelligenz" ;  and 
those  absorbed  in  these  questions  range  from  the  sort 
of  politicians  who  love  to  fish  in  troubled  waters,  to  the 
purest  and  most  disinterested  idealists.  The  simple- 
people  in  the_countryplaces,  however,  who  are  for  the 
mostjpart  the  peo^pje  thaj.jcometous,  are  at  hnTTL£_rnim- 
pajratively  little  concerrifd  with  sv^"h  matter^  They  are 
mainly  "conscious  of  kind"  in  a  much  narrower  range. 
Each  little  village  is  a  tiny  world  in  itself,  with  its  own 
traditions  and  ways,  its  own  dress,  perhaps  even  its  own 
dialect.  The  neighbor  from  the  next  town,  even,  is  an 
outsider.  In  a  Bohemian  market-place  I  saw  a  sign, 
which  might  have  come  out  of  the  guild-merchant  period 
of  English  history,  forbidding  "foreigners"  to  sell  to 
dealers  before  ten  o'clock. 

It  is  an  interesting  question  how  the  transition  to  the 
new  world  affects  these  racial  relations. 

How  emi-  In  the  first  place,  among  some  peoples  and  at  some 

gration  points   emigration  has  as  a   consequence  a  growth -of 

relations  racial  feeling.  The  man  whose  sense  of  social  solidarity 
had  been  limited  to  his  hamlet  or  parish  wakens  to  a 
wider  group  consciousness.  The  Slovak  finds  other 
Slovaks  quite  intelligible  even  if  of  another  town,  nay 
even  if  of  another  county,  and  he  thus  matures  for 
political-racial  interests.  Political  leaders  take  ad 
vantage  of  this  heightened  racial  feeling  and  of  the  free 
dom  of  the  new  world  to  teach  their  people  patriotism 
as  they  understand  it.  For  instance,  in  America,  Polish 
leaders  indoctrinate  their  people  with  Polish  enthusiasm 
and  hopes  of  a  future  free  Poland,  as  they  could  not  do 
in  Europe;  and  the  Slovak  is  taught  by  his  national 
guides  to  interest  himself  in  the  struggle  for  national 


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35 


36  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

existence  in  Hungary.  In  the  same  way  not  only  Slavs 
but  of  old  the  Irish,  and  later  the  Syrians,  Armenians 
and  other  oppressed  and  burdened  peoples  have  found 
in  America,-  where  liberty  and  prosperity  give  them  room, 
a  national  recruiting  ground  for  patriots. 

But  the  secondary  eltect  andjtfi^more-^tttiversal  one 
is  Jrj^the  opposite  direction.  The  widening  process 
continues!  The  Slovak,  for  instance,  comes  naturally  to 
find  himself  classed,  both  by  himself  and  by  others,  with 
Poles,  Ruthenians,  even  Croatians;  he  feels  that  he  is 
nearer  to  them  than  to  Germans,  Irish  or  Yankees. 
But  panslavic  feeling  is  a  frail  plant  in  America;  the 
contrast  of  practical  concern  is  that  between  "  foreigners  " 
and  "Americans,"  between  the  green  outsider  and  the 
insider  who  alone  has  a  chance  at  whatever  plums 
there  may  be.  The  children  above  all  are  apt  to  be 
profoundly  bored  by  national  questions  over  which 
their  parents  become  so  strangely  agitated.  Thus  the 
old  national  passions  tend  to  die  away,  partly__clieck£d 
by  personal  and  material  concerns  and  the  desire  to 
"get  on,"  partly  replaced  by  new  interest  in  questions 
of  wider  import,  or  at  least  of  more  immediate  applica 
tion. 


CHAPTER  IV 

GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  SLAVIC  EMIGRATION 
FROM  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY* 

While   it   is   true    that    each    Slavic   national   group,  Common 
each  Slavic  territory,  must  be  studied  separately  to  be  ^lavic^ 
understood,  there  are  certain  features  which  occur  in  all,  gration 
and  which  in  spite  of  some  repetition,  may  to  advantage 
be  discussed  in  a  preliminary  way  in  their  general  bear- 


;>.<)ne  of  the  most  'important  general  facts  about  our  Some  mis- 
Slavic  immigrants  is  that  apart  from  the  early  Bohemian  asTo  Ppeas-S 
movement  they  for  the  most  part  represent  t.hp  p^a^rit  ants 


There  is,  I  think,  much  misunderstanding  in 
America  as  to  what  this  means.  A  peasant  seems  to 
be  understood  as  a  synonym  for  a  member  of  the  lowest 
possible  social  class;  a  being  devoid  of  all  claims  to  re 
spect  who  takes  a  great  step  up  when  he  becomes  a 
factory  employe.  Such  views  rest  on  a  serious  miscon 
ception.  The  peasant  is  a  landholder,  mpre_nj 
parable  to  the  American  tarmer  than  to  any  other 
among  us.  and  at  home  is  far  from  being  at  the  bottom 
of  the  social  ladder.  The  old  peasant  life,  the  substratum 
of  all  European  history,  is  known  to  us  as  Americans 
only  through  literature,  history  and  travel,  for  America 
has  never  had  a  peasantry,  and  in  England,  from  which  we 
derive,  agriculture  has  been  carried  on  for  centuries,  not 
by  peasant  proprietors,  but  by  landless  laborers.  Yet  the 
system  which  still  largely  subsists  in  Austria  and  Hun 
gary  was  once  universal  throughout  feudal  Europe, 
passing  away  in  some  countries  earlier,  in  others  later. 

*  The  development  and  amount  of  Slavic  emigration  is  con 
sidered  province  by  province  in  the  following  chapters  of  Part  I. 
An  accdjunt  of  sources  of  statistical  information  (apart  from 
the  American  data)  is  given  in  Appendix  V,  page  433. 

37 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  peas 
ant's  status 
in  Austria 


His  holding 


Serfdom 
in'^ustria- 


In  Austria,  up  to  1848,  mediaeval  conditions  were  com 
paratively  little  changed.  Actual  serfdom,  in  the  sense 
of  absence  of  all  personal  rights,  had  indeed  disappeared 
in  the  fifteenth  century.  But  up  to  1848  the  legal  owner 
ship  of  land  was  still  all  vested  in  the  lords  or  landed  class ; 
the  peasants  had  only  so-called  unterdominium  in  their 
holdings,  which  were  of  two  main  classes,  those  which 
were  inherited  and  those  held  for  life  only. 

The  peasant  holding  involved  very  definite  duties 
and  rights.  In  return  for  his  land  the  peasant  had  to  do 
a  certain  amount  of  work  for  his  lord,  and  these  labor  dues 
(Bohemian,  robota)  were  often  very  oppressive.  At  cer 
tain  seasons,  as  Christmas  or  Easter,  he  had  to  pay  special 
dues  in  kind,  such  as  poultry  or  eggs.  Besides  all  this, 
the  lord  still  retained  many  of  the  old  privileges,  such  as 
hunting  rights  and  the  monopoly  of  milling,  brewing  and 
of  selling  drinks.  The  peasant  could  not  sell  or  mortgage 
his  land  except  on  certain  conditions  nor  without  per 
mission,  and  he  could  not  throw  up  the  land  at  will, 
nor  withdraw  from  it  without  supplying  a  responsible 
substitute, — his  son,  for  instance.  Above  all,  he  could 
not  divide  it.  On  the  other  hand,  he  had  carefully  de 
fined  privileges  as  to  the  use  of  wood,  pasturage,  and 
so  on. 

The  regular  peasant  holding  differed  in  size  according 
to  locality.  In  general,  it  comprised  probably  50  or  60 
yokes  of  arable  land  (35  to  42  acres).  Below  the  "full 
peasant"  were  poorer  classes,  the  half  peasant  and  the 
quarter  peasant  with  correspondingly  smaller  holdings; 
and  below  these,  lower  classes  still, — cottiers,  laborers 
and  so  on.  In  the  time  of  Maria  Theresa  the  man  with 
an  eighth  of  a  peasant  holding  counted  as  a  cottier 
merely. 

In  1848  serfdom,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  still  existed, 
was  abolished  in  Austria,  and  also  in  Hungary  where  the 
conditions  had  been  similar  to  those  in  Austria.  The 
peasant  became  a  free  peasant  proprietor,  repaying 
gradually  to  the  state  the  redemption  money  which  the 


A  jter  the  painting  by  Jaroslav  Spillar 

FEUDAL  LABOR  DUES  IN  BOHEMIA.     ABOLISHED  1848 


EMBROIDERED  BODICE  OF  A  SLOVAK  PEASANT 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         39 

state  had  advanced  to  the  landlords.     The  payment  was 
practically  completed  in  Austria  by  1872. 

InjTiany  parts  of  Austria  it  was  not  till  the  sixties  Subdivision 
that  the""pe55ant  was  given  the  right  to  subdivide_Jhis  of  land 
lancir^tii  1867-1869  trle~~right  was  made  general,  ex 
cept  for  the  Tyrol  and  in  certain  excepted  cases.  This 
liberty  has  produced  very  different  results  in  different 
provinces.  In  the  German  Alpine  territory  custom  has, 
in  general,  preserved  the  size  of  the  holdings,  and  in 
many  cases  a  prosperous  and  substantial  peasantry 
has  maintained  itself.  In  other  districts,  on  the  contrary, 
where  it  has  not  been  the  custom  to  leave  the  land  to 
one  heir,  but  to  divide  it  equally  among  the  children, 
extreme  subdivision  has  resulted  in  increasing  indebted 
ness,  frequent  foreclosures  and  general  impoverishment. 

While  it  is  nearly  two  generations  since  the  old  Survivals  of 
agrarian  system,  resting  on  an  unfree  peasant  class, 
was  legally  abolished,  its  results  are  by  no  means  a 
thing  of  the  past.  In  a  Hungarian  village  which  I 
visited  there  was  an  old  man  who  still  remembered  being 
beaten  as  a  boy  by  the  lord's  steward  for  some  trivial 
fault  in  connection  with  the  feudal  field  work.  One 
even  hears  of  the  old  feudal  dues  being  paid  by  ignorant 
peasants  in  out-of-the-way  spots,  just  as  in  our  South 
unpaid  labor  was  for  some  time  given  by  negroes  who 
did  not  know  that  they  were  free.  In  some  places  in 
Hungary  there  are  still  actually  unfree  tenants  called 
Zeliary ,  who  are  kept  bound  to  the  soil  by  a  sort  of  peonage 
system.  They  are  under  a  debt  for  their  land  which  they 
are  never  allowed  to  work  off,  so  that  they  are  not  at  lib 
erty  to  leave  the  place  and  try  to  do  better  elsewhere. 
Consequently  the  landlord  is  at  liberty  to  make  his 
own  terms.  The  hideous  poverty  resulting  in  one  such 
village  is  something  which  I  can  never  forget. 

Shocking  as  such  conditions  of  acute  misery  are,  they  Land  held 

are  less  serious  than  the  hampering  effects  of  certain  in  striPs  and 

open  field 
widespread   remnants   of   the    mediaeval    system.     The  farming 

holding  of  a  peasant  in  Austria,  as  in  mediaeval  England, 


40  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

was  not  one  compact  area  like  an  American  farm; 
instead  it  consisted  of  a  number  of  scattered  strips. 
If  a  man  held  30  acres,  he  had  perhaps  60  half -acre 
strips,  not  contiguous,  but  lying  interwoven  with  those 
of  others  as  designated  shares  of  great  open  fields.  The 
different  holdings  being  thus  interlocked,  all  had  to 
follow  the  same  plan  of  farming  and  sow  and  harvest 
at  the  same  date  and,  what  is  involved  in  this,  raise 
practically  the  same  crops.  The  complex  division  of  the 
land  holdings  of  a  village,  and  the  way  in  which  a  man's 
acreage  is  cut  up  and  scattered,  is  shown  in  the  survey 
of  a  Moravian  village  printed  as  Map  VI. 

The  three-  This  subdivision  of  the  land,  with  all  its  consequences, 
1  survives  in  much  of  Austria  and  Hungary  today,  and 
makes  it  almost  impossible  to  break  away  from  the 
antiquated  "three-field"  system  of  agriculture^  which, 
in  the  absence  of  sufficient  fertilizer  or  scientific  rotation 
of  crops,  kept  one-third  of  the  soil  fallow  each  year, 
one-thircl  in  autumn-sown  crops'ahd  one-third  in  spring- 
sown.  _^^ 

Among  the  Slovaks  one  can  see  now  Langland's 
"  fair  field  full  of  folk,"  and  for  the  same  reason.  I  have 
counted  thirty  men  ploughing  at  the  same  time,  each 
working  his  share  of  the  same  big,  unbroken  field, — open, 
for  each  man's  share  is  marked,  not  by  hedge,  fence  or 
wall,  but  only  by  a  furrow  some  thirty  centimeters 
(or  about  a  foot)  wide,  which  must  not  be  planted. 
It  is  said,  and  I  believe  the  case  has  actually  occurred, 
that  the  strips  are  sometimes  so  narrow  that  a  man 
must  walk  on  his  neighbor's  land  to  lead  the  plough- 
horse  on  his  own.  You  may  follow  such  a  strip  with  the 
eye,  over  hollow  and  swell,  till  it  disappears  over  the 
last  ridge  in  sight.  When  land  is  divided,  for  instance 
among  sons,  each  strip  is  generally  split  lengthwise 
to  insure  equality.  Otherwise  one  might  get  the  sunny 
slope  and  the  rich  hollow,  another  the  cold  slope  and  a 
poor  bit  of  sandy  soil.  Thus  the  strips  get  ever  narrower. 
This  system  is  wasteful  in  every  way.  First,  it  is  wasteful 


, 

PRIM/I 


OI.O.M01T 


v'H 


J7 


\ 


MAP  VI.— VILLAGE  MAP,  MORAVIA 


MAP  VI.— A  MORAVIAN  VILLAGE  WITH  LAND  IN  OPEN 
FIELDS   AND    PROPERTY  HELD  IN  STRIPS. 

The  holdings  of  one  man,  scattered  in  eighteen  different 
places,  are  numbered  to  show  their  location. 

The  inhabitants  of  this  village  of  Pfikazy,  near  Olmutz  in 
Moravia,  having  decided  to  reapportion  their  land  had  a  survey 
made  from  which  this  map  was  taken.  The  village  is  a  rich 
one  and  therefore  not  wholly  typical  of  those  which  send  many 
emigrants  to  America  but  some  details  in  regard  to  it  may  be 
interesting. 

The  houses  stand  in  a  row  on  each  side  of  the  street  which 
is  lined  with  a  solid  facing  of  housefronts  and  high  yard  walls 
or  gates.  The  houses  stretch  back  from  the  street  with  quar 
ters  for  married  servants,  perhaps  a  room  for  cooking  food  for 
the  high-bred  cattle  and  swine,  store-houses  and  so  forth. 
There  may  be  a  silo  pit  in  the  yard  for  beet-root  feed,  besides 
sheds,  barns,  stalls,  pig-pens  and  so  on,  and  from  the  yard  a 
farm  road  leading  back  to  the  fields. 

In  the  old  days  this  village  owed  its  prosperity  in  part  to 
the  comparative  freedom  of  Moravia  from  the  wars  and  per 
secutions  which  devastated  Bohemia,  and  in  especial  to  the 
fact  that  it  had  no  lay  overlord  but  was  under  the  lighter  rule 
of  the  Chapter  of  Olmutz  and  exempt  from  labor  dues. 

If  I  understood  my  informant  correctly  this  village  has 
no  "whole  peasants,"  nothing  above  a  "half  peasant,"  but 
about  fifty-six  homesteads  with  holdings  of  about  fifty  acres 
each.  There  are  beside  "small  peasants"  (chalupnice)  with 
some  ten  yokes  (14.2  acres)  apiece,  and  cottiers  (domkare) 
with  a  third  of  a  yoke  of  land  (or  none  if  of  more  recent  origin). 
They  may  hire  land  from  peasants  who  do  not  work  their  land. 
Thirty-five  families  own  no  house.  They  hire  a  dwelling  or  live 
with  their  employers.  Some  of  these  men  work  in  the  beet  sugar 
factories  near  by 

A  peasant  in  this  village  commonly  owns  three  horses  and 
a  peasant's  social  standing  is  largely  measured  by  his  stock. 
A  "horse  peasant"  so  outranks  an  "ox  peasant,"  I  was  told 
elsewhere,  that  a  man  often  keeps  a  pair  of  horses  at  an  eco 
nomic  loss  for  the  sake  of  the  prestige.  More  horses  were 
formerly  kept  in  Pfikazy  than  now  and  horses  were  bred  there. 
Now  grassland  previously  held  in  common  has  been  converted 
into  arable  at  a  great  profit  and  subdivided  pro  rata.  The 
profit  on  the  draining  of  some  wet  land  thus  converted  was 
put  at  $80,000. 

The  dowry  of  a  peasant's  daughter  in  this  village  is  from 
five  thousand  to  twelve  thousand  dollars  and  a  wedding  fes 
tivity  would,  not  long  ago,  last  the  greater  part  of  a  week  with 
much  drinking,  dancing  and  feasting.  A  cooperative  town 
bank  has  $320,000  in  deposits. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Reform 
difficult 


Social 
standing  of 
peasant 


His  supe 
riors 


of  land.  Where  the  holdings  are  in  strips  only  seven 
meters  wide,  the  boundary  furrows  take  up  nearly  a 
tenth  of  the  land  (8.6  per  cent).  Moreover,  the  strips 
being  straight,  if  a  field  happens  not  to  be  rectangular, 
awkward  corners  are  left  which  must  be  laboriously 
worked  by  hand.  It  is  wasteful  of  time,  for  a  man  has  to 
travel  all  over  the  crazy-quilt  of  the  township  to  work 
his  many  scattered  bits  of  land. 

This  system,  though  thoroughly  superannuated,  is 
hard  to  change.  The  process  of  "commassation,"  by 
which  all  the  land  is  thrown  together  and  redivided  in 
equivalent  lump  lots  is  hard  to  carry  out  fairly,  and  im 
possible  to  carry  out  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  concerned. 
Simpler,  though  less  adequate,  is  a  readjustment  which 
forms  lots  of  more  reasonable  shapes,  and  relocates  them 
so  that  their  owners  have  access  to  their  pieces  freely, 
instead  of  having  to  get  at  them  across  their  neighbors' 
lots,  and  so  only  under  severe  restrictions,  as  is  neces 
sarily  the  case  with  the  intermixed  strip  holdings. 

A  peasant  is  thus  something  quite  distinct  from  any 
thing  that  we  know  in  America.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
is  a  link  in  a  chain  of  family  inheritance  and  tradition 
that  may  run  back  for  centuries,  with  a  name,  a  reputa 
tion,  and  a  posterity.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  con 
fessedly  and  consciously  an  inferior.  It  is  part  of  his 
world  that  there  should  be  a  God  in  heaven,  and  masters 
(Herrschaften,  Pani)  on  the  earth. 

When  the  peasant's  holding  became  his  own  property, 
a  large  part  of  the  land  in  the  village  probably  remained 
i$  the  hands  of  the  lord.  The__typical  village  has  one 
lEpn^derable  gentleman's  estate  and  a  number  of  small 
properties.  So  the  peasant  takes  off  his  cap  to  those 
dressed  like  gentlefolk,  known  or  unknown.  He  bears 
himself  toward  them  with  an  inherited  respect.  At 
the  same  time  there  is  a  sense  of  profound  and  hardly 
bridgeable  difference  between  himself  and  gentlemen, 
a  feeling  which  may  be  friendly,  but  is  sometimes  colored 
by  distrust  or  intense  antagonism. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         43 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  peasant  has  his  superiors,  His  inferiors 
he  also  has  recognized  inferiors,  and  in  many  places  ^s  c 
three  classes  of  them.  First  is  the  cottager  or  cottier, 
(German  Hausler,  Bohemian  chalupnik],  the  man  who, 
with  a  house  and  bit  of  field,  has  yet  no  pretensions  to 
getting  his  living  off  his  land.  Cottagers  may  eke  out  their 
living  with  trades,  as  shoemakers  or  smiths  or  weavers, 
for  example,  or  they  may  hire  themselves  to  work  for 
other  landowners  in  their  free  time.  In  a  satire  of  the 
Bohemian  writer  Havlic'ek's  he  is  describing  how,  in  an 
interregnum  in  heaven,  everything  nevertheless  wrent  on 
in  the  old  way: 

"  Vsecky  feky  byly  mokre 

A  kameni  tvrde : 
Chalupnice  hubovaly 
Ze  jsou  selky  hrdeV' 

"All  the  rivers  still  were  wet, 

The  stones  they  still  were  hard, 

And  the  cottagers'  wives  complained 

That  peasants  are  (too)  proud." 

Secondly,  there  are  the  day  laborers,  who  often  live   (2)  Laborers 
in  cottages  belonging  to  their  employer,   and  may  be 
paid  partly  in  cash,  partly  in  kind. 

Thirdly,  there  are  the  "farm  servants,"  not  servants   (3)  Farm 
in  the  American  sense,  but  rather  what  we  should  call  servants 

"farm  hands." jThese  are  both  men  and  girls,  and  are 

generally  hired  by  the  year,  and  boarded  by  their  em 
ployer.  You  will  often  find  peasants  living  so  wretchedly 
that  we  should  consider  them  on  the  brink  of  misery, 
who  yet  are  worlds  above  their  servants  housed  more  like 
animals  than  people.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  well-to-do 
Moravian  village  there  were  often  comfortable  one  or  two- 
room  homes  in  the  back  part  of  the  main  house,  where 
married  farm  servants  kept  house  in  privacy  and  comfort. 

In  his  circumstances  the  peasant  may  be  not  only  Peasant 
prosperous  but  rich,* — very  rich,  even,  if  one  takes  his  w  and 

*  See  the  account   of  a  rich  Hungarian  peasant  in  Baroness 
Orczy's  "A  Son  of  the  Soil";    or  in  Appendix  II,  page  431. 


44 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Contrast 


workman 


Tradition 
and  arts 


way  of  living  and  aspirations  into  account.  But  he  is 
more  likely  to  be  hard  pressed  with  work,  with  care, 
perhaps  with  debt.  His  roof  may  leak,  his  meal  chest 
show  the  bottom,  his  crop  be  sold  to  the  usurer  before  it 
is  sown, — he  is  still  a  property  owner,  a  tax  payer,  a 
permanent  constituent  of  an  old  social  order,  known  to 
and  knowing  all  his  associates,  and  enjoying  a  respect 
nicely  adjusted  to  his  acres  and  family. 

His  son's  marriage,  his  daughter's  dowry,  the  pension 
ing  of  his  superannuated  parents,  the  paying  off  the 
portions  of  his  brothers  and  sisters,  all  are  questions  of 
property  consideration ;  one  might  almost  say  that  they 
have  a  dynastic  character. 

The  peasant  is  an  entirely  different  type  from  the 
workingman.  He  jias  npt,the  workingman's  quickness,. .... 
nor  all  that  he  has  gained  in  intelligence  and  self-re 
liance  through  competition,  frequent  change  of  place, 
and  the  trituration  of  city  and  factory  life.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  has  the  conservatism,  the  solidity,  the  shrewd 
ness,  the  self-respect  that  go  with  property,  independence, 
and  an  assured  social  position.  He  is  likely  to  be  hard 
and  niggardly;  this  is  perhaps  the  ugliest  side.  He 
and  his  are  likely  to  be  in  some  degree  coarse,  with  the 
coarseness  of  those  that  have  to  deal  with  nature  not 
mainly  as  the  source  of  aesthetic  emotions  but  of  a 
good  litter  of  pigs  and  a  proper  production  of  manure. 

Yet  along  with  all  this,  and  seemingly  contradict 
ing  it,  the  Slavic  peasant  has  created  a  world  of  fancy,  _ 
of  song,  of  tradition,  a  whole  code  of  dress,  maniTers, 
morals.,.  The  family  living  is  apt  to  be  what  is  to  our 
minds  a  curious  combination  of  frugality  carried  to 
the  verge  of  want  with  luxury  of  a  very  solid  and  ex 
pensive  sort.  If  you  wish  to  respect  the  peasant's 
purse,  try  to  buy  clothes  or  furniture  like  his.  If  you 
wish  to  respect  his  disregard  of  money,  try  to  buy  them 
of  him.  It  is  amusing  to  see  how  incomprehensible 
this  latter  characteristic  is  to  a  commercial-minded  Jew. 
"Silly  geese,"  said  a  shopkeeper,  as  some  women  re- 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         45 

fused  his  offers  on  our  behalf  for  some  embroidered  caps 
that  they  were  wearing.  "Silly!" — They  were  refusing 
to  sell  when  a  buyer  was  ready  to  pay  more  than  market 
value, — something  explicable  to  him  only  by  lack  of  sense. 

Now  import  a  man  like  this   peasant   into  America.   Effect  of 
The  courtesy  which  rested  on  acceptance  of  a  fixed  class  ^the08 
station  disappears  as  he  realizes  that  he  is  not  expected  peasant 
to  regard  himself  as  an  inferior.     On  the  other  hand,  he 
loses  that  standing  which  largely  gave  him  his  old  form 
of  "self-respect  and  self-consciousness.     Again,  there  is 
nothing  -  in    his    sensitiveness   to   make   him   revolt   at 
coarseness  and  roughness,  which  here,  in  our  cities,  have 
different  connotations  and  consequences  from   country 
plainness.     But  at  the  same  time  his  endurance,  persis 
tence,  toughness  of  fibre  and  ingrained  loyalties  will  in 
many  cases  pull  him  through  and  put  him  at  last  in  a 
situation  which  will  open  new  possibilities  to  his  children, 
if  not  to  himself,  especially  if  he  settles  in  America. 

I  do  not  of  course  mean  to  imply  that  those  who  emi-  Emigrants 
grate  are  all  peasants,  in  the  strict  sense;  that  laborers  now  largely 
and  landless  men  do  not  also  come.     But  the  Austrian 
census  figures  given  in  Table  2  show  in  the  first  place 
how  large  a  proportion  of  the  population  is  agricultural, 
in  the  second  place  how  large  a  part  of  those  in  agricul 
ture  (in  the  provinces  with  which  we  are  most  concerned, 
well  over  one-half)  are   members  of  independent   agri 
cultural  families. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  many  who  appear  in  the  table 
as  employes  are  to  all  intents  and  purposes  of  the  same 
class  as  the  self-employed,  being  sons  and  daughters  of 
relatives  and  neighbors  whose  land  does  not  occupy  all 
the  family  energy.  The  figures  therefore  corroborate 
the  fact  that  is  clear  on  any  first-hand  knowledge  of 
the  situation,  that  the  bulk  of  the  emigration  with  which 
we  are  dealing  represents  the  experience  and  point  of 
view  of  peasants  and  of  agricultural  laborers  who  are 
not  far  removed  from  peasants.  For  Hungary  we  do  not 
have  to  rely  on  indirect  indications  as  the  occupations  of 


46 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


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SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         47 

persons  known  to  have  emigrated  are  reported  and  about 
two-thirds  of  them  come  from  agricultural  occupations.* 

The  old  peasant  economy  was  almost  self-sufficing.  Peasant 
House  industry  eked  out  the  farm  production.  The 
earthenware  for  cooking  and  the  pretty  flowered  crockery, 
the  wooden  utensils  for  stall  and  house,  the  farm  tools — 
fork  and  rake  and  plough, —  the  products  of  spinning- 
wheel  and  loom  and  needle  and  dye-pot,  all  were  home 
made,  and  few  were  the  articles  that  must  be  bought  for 
money. 

This  old  self-sufficient  household  economy  was,  how-   Industry 
ever,   gradually  broken    in   upon  from    many   sides  as  [2^5°  the^ 
industry    developed    at    the    expense    of    agriculture,   system 
Even  in  places  where  no  industry  arose  the  effect  of 
that  which  was  growing  up  in  other  countries,  afar  or 
nearby,  made  itself  powerfully  felt.     As  a  "money  econ 
omy,"  with  purchase  and  sale,  extended,  the  dependence 
on  household  production  diminished.     Money  was  needed 
for    taxes.     The    obvious    economy    of    cheap    factory 
textiles,  the  superiority  of  iron  pots  to  earthen  ones, 
indeed  the  temptation  of  novel  wares  of  various  kinds 
at  low  prices,  all  made  new  demands  for  money.     With 
these  changes  went  a  rise  in  standards  of  living;    new 
goods  were  available  and  new  desires  were  contagious. 

*  See  Appendix  V,  page  433,  or  the  further  figures  for  Croatia 
in  Appendix  XIII,  page  452. 

The  American  immigration  statistics  in  regard  to  the  occu 
pation  of  immigrants,  which  ought  to  give  complete  data 
on  the  point  in  question,  are  unfortunately  worse  than  use 
less.  For  instance,  although  Ruthenians  are  generally  en 
gaged  in  agriculture,  of  1400  Ruthenians  arriving  in  1899,  only 
3  are  reported  to  have  been  farmers,  76  farm  laborers.  Of 
16,170  Slovaks  in  1908,  20  are  given  as  farmers,  6,733  as 
farm  laborers.  In  1907,  Hungary  reported  27,915  Slovaks  emi 
grating  to  all  destinations,  of  whom  17,334  were  engaged  in 
agriculture,  4587  of  them  on  their  own  account.  In  the  year 
begun  July  i,  1907,  the  United  States  authorities  reported  23,573 
Slovak  immigrants,  of  whom  558  were  in  agriculture,  52  of  them 
on  their  own  account  (as  "farmers").  The  unreliability  of  these 
figures  is  not  hard  to  understand  when  an  agent  who  makes 
them  out  for  all  his  emigrant  clients  remarks  that  he  puts 
down  not  the  past  occupation  of  an  emigrant  but  what  will 
be  his  occupation  in  America.  (See  page  137,  note.) 


40  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

At  the  same  time  with  this  rise  in  demands,  growth 
of  population  without  growth  of  industry  made  an  in 
creased  pressure  on  the  land. 

The  following  table  is  interesting,  showing  &s  it  does 
the  net  loss  or  gain  by  emigration  and  inTmigration,  in 
connection  with  the  excess  of  births  over  deaths,  and 
the  density  per  square  kilometer.  If  the  figures  were 
given  for  arable  land  instead  of  for  total  area  they  would 
be  more  significant;  as  it  is,  the  greater  densities  reflect 
sometimes  urban  populations  and  industrial  districts, 
sometimes  agricultural  over-population. 

TABLE   3.— POPULATION    OF    AUSTRIA;    MOVEMENT 
AND   DENSITY.* 


AUSTRIAN  CROWN  LANDS 

NET  Loss  OR  GAIN  PER  THOUSAND 
OF  POPULATION  DURING  THE 
DECADE  1891-1900 

DENSITY  PER 
SQUARE 
KILOMETER 
IN  1900 

By  Births 
and 
Deaths 

1    By  Migra 
tion  f 

1 

Total 

Bohemia  

4-  10.22;         2.08 
+  10-39          —     3.32 
+  12.44!        O.OQ 

4-  15.30          4.58 
4-  I5-04             -2.11 

+     8.35|           -    6.5I 

4-    6.071      —  4.32 
4-    6.191     —  0.44 

+    9.39        -  3.68 

4-  I  1.02             -    2.38 

4-14-95       ~  2-37 
+    2.71       4-  to.  74 

4-    4-671      +    0.25 
4-    6.911      +    4-43 
4-    5-47       +    5-64 
4-    5.91       —  2.80 
4-    9-52'      4-    6.97 

4-  ii.  1  11     —  1.67 

4-  8.14 
4-  7.07 
+  I2-35 

4-  10.72 
+  12.93 

4-  1.84 
+  1-75 

+  5-75 

+  5-71 
4-  8.64 
4-12.58 

+  J3-43 

4-  4-92 
+  11.34 
4-n.ii 
4-  3.11 
4-16.49 

4-  9-44 

121 
I  10 
J32 

93 

7° 

5i 
35 
60 

So 
69 
46 
1880 

32 
49 
27 
67 
156 

87 

Moravia  

Silesia  

Galicia  

Bukowina  

Carniola  

Carinthia  
Stvria  

Goricia  and  Gradisca.   . 
Istria  
Dalmatia  

Trieste  and  its  district  . 

Tyrol  
Vorarlberg  
Salzburg  
Upper  Austria  

Lower  Austria  
(includes  Vienna) 

All  Austria  

*  "Die  Summarischen  Ergebnisse  der  Volkszahlung,"  1900, 
pages  xvi  and  xix. 

t  For  a  graphic  representation  of  these  data  by  districts  see 
Map  V,  page  35. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         49 

The  old  peasant  economy  had  represented  a  fairly  stable  (Old  peasant 
economic    equilibrium.     Population  was    kept  more  or; 
less  at  a  level  by  it,  since  only  one  son  could  take  his 
father's  place,  and  consequently  it  was  difficult  for  more 
than  one  to  establish  a  family,  unless,  indeed,  he  went 
away  "  to  seek  his  fortune."     It  was  the  expectation  that 
everything  should  go  on  as  it  had  done.     That  is  the 
essence  of  custom,  and  the  peasant  world  is  the  world  of 
custom. 

The  results  of  the  breakup  of  the  old  system  of  land  (Broken  up 
holding  were  often  disastrous.  The  peasant  being  free 
to  divide  his  land  and  feeling  that  his  children  all  had  I 
equal  claims,  cut  up  land  which  was  only  sufficient  to 
support  one  household  among  a  number  of  descendants. 
The  landholder  unable  to  support  himself  from  his  own 
plot  sought  to  eke  out  his  living  by  working  for  wages 
in  a  population  where  few  could  afford  to  hire  labor. 
In  some  districts  debts,  contracted  under  circumstances 
which  put  the  borrower  at  the  mercy  of  a  Jewish  cred 
itor,  worked  havoc. 

Thus   the   peasant   with   mortgage   payments   which  /  Peasant 
he  could  not  meet  or  with  children  for  whom  he  could  u™a^okl 
not  provide   an   adequate  patrimony,  saw  himself  face  Celine  in 
to  face  with  an  intolerable  decline  of  social  status  for  js 
himself  or  for  his  children;    namely,  reduction  to  the 
position  of  a  propertyless  day  laborer.     This  is  the  sting 
which  induces  many  a  man,  among  the  Slovaks,   the 
Poles,  the  Ruthenians,  to  fare  over  seas  or  to  send  out 
his  son  to  the  new  land  from  which  men  come  back  with 
savings. 

In  some  cases  the  country-side  had  never  supported 
its  population;  there  had  always  been  an  exodus,  per 
manent  or  seasonal,  of  some  of  the  men  and  boys,  as  for 
instance  in  some  Slovak  counties.  As  the  dislocation 
of  the  old  economy  became  more  serious,  and  as  mo 
bility  of  population  increased,  there  was  further  over 
flow, — to  Germany  for  the  summer  farm  work,  to  the 
cities,  to  less  closely  settled  districts,  (e.  g.  to  Southern 
4 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Not  settled 
poverty  but 
a  disturb 
ance  of  the 
budget  a 
cause 


Emigrating 
on  credit 


Hungary),  to  Russia,  to  Brazil,  to  the  United  States. 
Quicker  transportation,  and  above  all,  knowledge  of  the 
facts,  opened  the  way  across  the  sea,  and  all  the  requisites 
for  a  heavy  emigration  movement  were  present.  Some 
times  the  head  of  a  family  goes  to  retrieve  the  family 
fortunes,  sometimes  he  sends  the  most  promising  son.  Or 
a  brother  goes  hoping  to  earn  enough  to  pay  off  the  in 
heritance  of  his  co-heirs  and  buy  the  sole  right  to  the  land 
which  cannot  support  more  than  one  family. 

While  the  grounds  of  emigration  are  in  the  main  eco 
nomic,  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  poverty  is  its  cause 
in  the  sense  that  the  greater  the  poverty  of  a  man  or 
district,  the  greater  the  impulse  to  emigration.  Poverty, 
especially  a  settled  poverty  to  which  people  have  ad 
justed  themselves,  and  which  finds  expression  in  a  low 
standard  of  living  and  perhaps  in  physical  deterioration, 
is  not  an  initiating  force.  Rather,  it  means  stagnation 
and  lack  of  any  margin  of  energy  for  new  undertakings. 

It  is  when  the  habitual  balance  of  family  budgets  is 
disturbed  that  a  sense  of  poverty  incites  to  emigration. 
The~  misadjustment  may  be  due  to  a  cutting  down  of 
income  by  some  disaster,  or  it  may  be  due  to  an  increase 
of  wants.  The  result  is  the  same.  And  this  awakening 
of  new  wants  is  a  characteristic  of  our  time,  affecting 
one  backward  and  lethargic  region  after  another.  It 
is  extremely  contagious,  and  the  news  that  it  is  anywhere 
possible  to  earn  more  and  to  live  better  calls  slumbering 
forces  of  energy  and  unrest  into  sudden  life.  Emigra 
tion  will  then  result  if  there  is  any  opening  which  prom 
ises  improved  circumstances. 

That  is,  it  will  result  if  there  are  means  to  meet  the 
expenses.  A  district  like  upper  Arva  county  in  Hun 
gary  may  be  too  poor  to  provide  emigrants.  The 
emigrant  himself,  however,  need  not  have  the  ready 
cash  for  the  journey,  and  in  a  very  large  proportion  of 
cases  he  has  not.  But  if  he  or  his  family  have  land,  he 
can  readily  borrow,  and  lacking  this,  many  an  emigrant 
borrows  on  his  personal  credit  merely. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         51 

Co-operating   with    the    general    economic  cause — an  Special 
agrarian  economy  of  a  primitive  type,  dislocated  by  the  Taxation 
competition  of  modern  industry — are,  of  course,   many 
more  special  causes.     One  of  these  is  the  excessive  burden  / 
of  taxes,*  which  sometimes  fall  with  crushing  force  on    i 
those  least  able  to  bear  them.     A  striking  story  of  the 
visit  of  a  tax  collector  to  a  poor  Ruthenian  family  will 
be  found  in  the  Ruthenische  Revue,  1904. 

Military    service    is    another    direct    and    continuing  /Army 

gary,  with  certain  exceptions,  must  serve  his  three  years, 
and  he  is  forbidden  to  marry  till  after  his  liability  to 
this  service  is  past.  Undoubtedly  the  interruption  of 
work  caused  by  the  time  in  the  army  is  in  many  cases 
felt  as  a  grievous  burden,  and  many  emigrate  to  escape 
it,  either  while  they  are  still  under  age,  or  with  more 
or  less  secrecy  during  the  period  of  Stellungspflicht. 
One  constantly  runs  across  cases  of  men  who  have 
emigrated  that  their  boys,  one  after  another,  might 
not  be  made  to  serve,  or  in  order  to  escape  their 
own  duty.  Nevertheless,  it  is  my  impression  that  the 
influence  of  this  factor  is  apt  to  be  exaggerated,  and  for 
corroboration  I  would  call  attention  to  the  figures  for 
Carniola  in  Appendix  XII,  page  451.  Previous  to  1863-4, 
when  the  time  of  military  service  was  longer,  the  desire 
to  avoid  the  army  is  said  to  have  been  more  important 
as  a  cause  of  emigration  than  it  has  been  since. 

Another  complicating  cause  is  political  unrest.     Many  Political 
of  our  Slavic  immigrants  come  from  groups  which  are  unrest 
more  or  less  in  the  position  of,  the  under  dog.     This  is  v 
most  notable  in  the  case  of  the  Slovaks,  but  even  with 
other  nationalities  political  discontent  and  the  growing- 
pains   of  a   yet  undeveloped   democracy   often   play  a 
part.     I  was  told,  for  instance,  that  emigrants  from  the 
rich  eastern  counties  of  Croatia-Slavonia,  who  seem  to 
have  no  economic  reason  for  leaving  home,  when  asked 
why  they  go,  say,  "Mi  ideme  trazeti  ima  li  Jos'  pravice 
*  See  Appendix  III,  page  432. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Stimulation 
by  agents 


na  svieto"  (We  go  to  see  if  there  is  still  justice  in  the 
world).  Generally,  however,  I  think  that  the  effect  of 
such  conditions  is  less  to  initiate  emigration  than  to 
cause  the  emigrant  who  returns  to  his  old  home  to  feel 
himself  a  misfit  there,  and  to  decide  to  take  up  his  per 
manent  residence  in  America.  (See  page  118.) 

Another  "cause"  of  emigration  is  the  advertising  and 
solicitation  of  transportation  agencies.  My  impression 
is  that  the  less  direct  and  concrete  knowledge  of  the 
matter  a  man  has,  the  more  weight  he  lays  on  this  factor. 
To  ascribe  immigration  to  the  steamship  companies  is  a 
rhetorical  commonplace  of  the  kind  of  speaker  who  tells 
us  that  "  the  immensity  of  the  problem  palls  upon  the  pa 
triot  who  confronts  it."  (The  quotation  is  a  literal  one.) 
In  the  old  days  the  agent  was  doubtless  active,  while 
on  the  other  hand  the  government  gendarmes  were  ar 
resting  would-be  emigrants  who  had  no  passes  and  turn 
ing  them  back.  Today  emigration  is  free,  except  for 
certain  provisions  to  insure  the  performance  of  military 
service,  and  passes  are  generally  little  more  than  a  form; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  advertising  and  solicitation  are 
carefully  regulated.  Doubtless  even  today,  however, 
much  soliciting  is  done  secretly. 

New  routes  The  opening  up  of  new  routes  and  ports  of  embarka 
tion  has  made  emigration  easier.  Havre  and  Marseilles, 
Antwerp  and  Genoa,  besides  Dutch  and  Belgian  ports, 
get  part  of  the  lucrative  business  of  shipping  emigrants. 
Of  late  both  Austria  and  Hungary  have  been  seized  with 
a  desire  to  keep  all  this  profit  in  the  country,  and  also 
keep  a  closer  control  of  emigration  conditions,  by  in 
ducing  emigrants  to  embark  at  the  home  ports.  That  is, 
Austria  would  like  to  see  her  emigrants  sail  from  Trieste 
by  the  Austro-American  line  and  Hungary  wishes  hers 
to  go  by  the  Cunard  line  via  Fiume. 

In  1903  there  was  great  excitement  in  the  United 
States  about  the  contract  between  the  Hungarian  govern 
ment  and  the  Cunard  Company,  by  which  the  former 
was  said  to  have  guaranteed  a  fixed  number  of  passengers 


Hungarian 
emigration 
policy 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         53 

a  year,  with  a  forfeit  for  all  the  deficit  below  that  number. 
This  arrangement,  if  it  ever  existed,  was  canceled,  at 
any  rate  apparently,  but  for  some  time  the  Hungarian 
government  went  to  the  most  unwarrantable  extremes, 
not,  I  believe,  to  increase  emigration,  but  to  force  in 
tending  emigrants  to  embark  at  Fiume.  This  whole 
matter  of  the  policy  and  practice  of  the  Austrian  and 
Hungarian  governments  in  regard  to  emigration  is  a 
complicated  one,  to  which  I  can  only  allude.* 

In  the  advertisement  and  pushing  of  emigration  facili-  Agents  fa- 
ties  many  classes  of  agents  are  concerned — agents  of  Jatherthan 
various  of  our  states  which  maintain    or    have  main-  cause  emi- 
tained    officials    to    stimulate   immigration;    agents   of  gratlon 
steamship  lines  from  the  central  office  to  the  pettiest 
sub-agent  or  peddler  of  tickets ;  agents  of  railroads ;  agents 
of  land  companies;  emissaries  (in  the  old  days  at  least) 
of  employers,  individual  and  corporate.     But  whether 
private  or  governmental,  open  or  illicit,  such  stimulation 
can  at  most  signify  little  more  than  greasing  the  wheels. 
Where  the  circumstances  are  such  as  to  produce  emi 
gration  men  will  learn  the  facts  and  act  on  them  in  the 
course  of  time,  even  if  advertising  be  absolutely  excluded. 
The  importance  of  the  emigration  agent  is  in  opening 
up  new  regions  which  are  ripe  for  emigration  and  in 
setting  the  ball  rolling.     He  hastens  the  starting  and 
makes  smooth  the  course  of  the  avalanche;    he  is  not 
responsible  for  more  than  this. 

Emigrants,  though  in  many  senses  ignorant,  are  men  Emigration 
taught  shrewdness  by  hard  lives,  and  they  are  venturing 
upon  a  very  costly  experiment.  They  know  much 
better  what  they  are  about  than  Americans  generally 
suppose.  The  first  to  go  from  a  given  locality  at  home, 
the  first  to  try  a  new  district  here,  report  their  experi 
ences  directly  or  indirectly.  All  but  a  comparatively 
few  pioneers  are  acting  on  advice  from  their  forerunners. 

Look  at  our  immigration  figures  (quoted  in  Appendix  IV, 
page  433)  showing  whether  or  not  immigrants  are  coming 
*  For  reference  see  Bibliography  under  Legislation. 


54 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  r61e  of 
accidents 


Personal 
motives 


The  true 
cause — dif 
ferences  in 
earning 
power 


to  join  relatives  or  friends.  Even  the  Bulgarian,  Servian 
and  Russian  immigration,  so  largely  still  in  a  pioneer 
stage,  shows  only  ten  in  a  hundred  who  are  not  coming 
to  join  relatives  or  friends  already  here.  Among  the 
older  immigrant  nationalities  the  number  falls  to  be 
tween  two  and  three  in  a  hundred.  This  is  a  condition 
not,  I  think,  generally  realized.  To  read  all  that  is 
written  about  directing  the  flow  of  immigrants,  dis 
tributing  it  to  better  advantage  and  so  forth,  one  would 
suppose  that  not  two  in  a  hundred,  but  all,  were  coming 
with  no  known  reason  for  selecting  one  destination  rather 
than  another. 

The  general  causes  at  work  are  intensified  at  given 
places  and  at  given  times,  by  all  sorts  of  occurrences.  A 
flood,  a  conflagration,  a  new  American  tariff,  an  outbreak 
of  phylloxera  in  the  vineyards,  or  a  treaty  admitting 
Italian  wine  at  a  lower  rate — all  these  have  been  actual 
stimulants  of  Slavic  inflow. 

As  in  any  mass  movement,  the  individual  is  more 
conscious  of  the  purely  personal  and  special  motives 
which  have  moved  him  than  of  the  general  causes  at 
work.  Men  emigrate  to  avoid  family  friction,  to  escape 
a  scandal,  to  see  new  scenes,  to  join  relatives,  because 
others  have  gone,  and  for  a  thousand  other  unclassifiable 
reasons.  It  still  remains  true  that  these  causes  play 
on  the  surface  of  the  stream  and  do  not  give  it  its  bulk 
of  energy  nor  its  direction. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  dislocation  of  the  old  agrarian 
economy  as  the  cause  of  emigration.  But  this,  after  all, 
is  only  a  part  of  the  story.  The  causa  causarum  is  a 
broader  one.  The  fundamental  problem  of  all  economics 
is  how  much  labor  will  produce  a  given  product,  how 
much  product  a  given  output  of  labor  will  produce. 
In  emigration  districts  things  are  relatively  dear  in  terms 
of  labor.  In  America,  labor  is  relatively  dear  in  terms 
of  things.  Given  an  open  sluiceway,  and  men  are 
bound  to  pour  to  the  place  where  land,  grain,  and  meat 
cost  least  in  terms  of  hours  of  human  energy. 


PRIMITIVE  METHODS  OF  PRODUCTION  IN  SLOVENSKO 

1.   Breaking   hemp.      This   woman   had   been   in    America.      2.   Herding    swine.      3.   Dye   house   with 
wooden  elbows  under  the  eaves  for  drying  cloth.      4.   Making  shingles  by  hand. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         55 

That  they  do  cost  less  in  America  is  due  to  three  main  Causes  of 
facts.  First,  America  has  a  vast  wealth  of  compara-  productivity 
tively  undrained  natural  resources  including  above  all 
agricultural  land  and,  of  only  less  importance,  metals, 
minerals,  timber  and  oil.  Second,  it  has  an  organization 
of  production  which  is  beyond  any  known  to  history 
untiTtEe  present  era,  and  which  is  today  equaled  per 
haps  by  Germany  alone.  This  rests  on  the  liberal  use 
of  machinery,  on  specialization  of  skill,  and  on  elaborate 
business  organization,  all  of  which  are  impossible  in 
industrially  backward  countries.  Third,  citizens  of  the 
United  States  have  the  immense  advantage  of  practically 
feeling  no  military  burden;  they  have  no  compulsory 
service,  and  in  the  general  prosperity  the  taxation  for 
military  affairs,  met  as  it  is  by  indirect  taxes,  though 
absolutely  large,  is  scarcely  noticed. 

The  whole  situation  is  suggested  by  a  passage  that  I  Cost  of 
ran  across  in  an  article  on  forestry  in  an  Austrian  ency-  ^rms  oT 
clopedia.     The  author  complained  of  the  shocking  waste  labor 
of  woods  going  on  in  some  places.     This  sometimes  went 
so  far,  he  said,  that  the  inhabitants  used  wood  to  build 
fences,  simply  to  save  the  trouble  of  having  the  cows 
herded.     What  should  we  think  of  the  unthrift  of  an 
American  farmer  who  should  pay  an  able-bodied  person 
to  watch  one  or  two  cows  day  after  day,  to  save  building 
a  fence?     The  instance  epitomizes  the  whole  situation, 
— relatively    cheap  labor  against  relatively   cheap   raw 
material. 

What  is  patent  and  obvious  is,  of  course,  the  money  Money 
expression  of  these  facts.  Wages  are  higher  in  the 
United  States  than  in  Bohemia  or  Galicia  or  Dalmatia. 
Precisely  how  much  higher,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
Complicated  forms  of  payment,  with  receipts  in  kind, 
rights  to  the  use  of  land,  free  milk,  or  fodder,  etc.,  confuse 
it  at  one  end,  and  the  difference  in  the  cost  of  living 
at  the  other.  Table  4  is  given  for  what  it  is  worth. 
Whatever  the  amount  of  the  difference  is,  there  is  no 
question  of  the  fact  that  it  is  an  important  one. 


56  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

TABLE    4.— AVERAGE    DAILY    WAGES    OF    AGRICUL 
TURAL  LABORERS,  1891 


COUNTRY 

WITH 
BOARD 

ADDITIONAL  WHEN  NO 

BOARD  GIVEN 

Bohemia  

O  2< 

O  4 

Moravia  
Silesia     .        

0.14 

Old. 

O.IO 
O   I  3 

Galicia    

O   I  2 

O   I  2 

Bukowina         

ore 

O  O 

Carniola  

O  2  I 

O   I  2 

Carinthia                   

o  16 

O   IO 

Styria            

o  18 

O   I  7 

Goricia  and  Gradisca   ) 
Istria                      .                                 }• 

o  20 

o  I  C 

Trieste  and  District  J 

Dalmatia  v  

0.26 

O.22 

Tyrol  and  Vorarlberg  

O.27 

O.I7 

Salzburg  

O.2I 

O.2O 

Upper  Austria  

O.22 

O.IQ 

Lower  Austria  

O.26 

O.22 

Austria-Hungary  and  the  Balkan  States.     Report  of  Royal 
British  Commission  on  Labor,  1894,  Vol  XI,  page  75. 


Price  of  land  The  other  chief  money  expression  of  the  economic 
ratios  of  the  countries  is  the  price  of  land,  and  here 
again  precise  comparison  is  impossible.  But  it  is  not  only 
the  price  of  land ;  it  is  its  availability,  its  plenty.  It  is 
hard  for  us  to  reproduce  to  ourselves  the  impression 
which  America  makes  on  the  European;  the  sense  of 
space,  of  opportunity,  of  a  very  clamor  of  the  earth  to 
men  to  come  and  use  it.  Our  talk  of  congestion,  of 
being  overfilled  with  hordes  of  foreigners,  strikes  a 
Polish  priest,  let  us  say,  in  a  country  parish,  who  does 
not  know  the  East  Side  of  New  York  which  perhaps 
dominates  the  mind  of  the  writer,  as  not  so  much  ludi 
crous  as  hypocritical. 

Is  emigra-          When  the  question  is  asked  whether  the  emigration 

thin  \  g<thd  movement  is  ^0  be  regarded  as  a  blessing  or  a  curse,  one 

emigrant?       must  first  distinguish — a  blessing  or  the  reverse  to  whom? 

And  if  one  begins  with  the  emigrants  themselves,  one 

immediately  finds    himself   trying   to    measure   incom- 

mensurables;    to   weigh   the   relative   values   of   things 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         57 

which  every  one  will  estimate  variously,  and  which  the 
same  person  will  estimate  differently  in  different  moods. 

The  old  village  life  may  not  always  be  sanitary  or  clean  Advantages 
or  moral,  but  it  is  harmonious,  complete,  self  consistent,   ^ntagesof 
Lying  aside  from  beaten  routes  of  travel,  many  Slavic  the  old 
districts  retain  to  an  amazing  extent  an  old-world  aspect 
which  gives  them  unspeakable  charm.     The  beautiful 
costumes,  fixed  by  tradition  but  differing  from  village 
to  village,  ornamented  with  exquisite  embroidery,  hand 
lace,  rich  braiding  or  leather  work,  are  still  in  many 
country  places  the  ordinary  and  general  dress.     They  are 
seen  at  their  best  at  the  weekly  market,  in  the  crowded 
church  during  mass,  or  at  a  wedding  or  a  dance  on  the 
green. 

The  gift  of  the  Slav  for  color  and  for  music  touches 
the  whole  life  with  poetry.  Every  occasion  and  act, 
every  wood  and  hill  and  stream,  has  its  adornment  of 
custom,  superstition  or  legend  which,  with  its  glamour, 
veils  to  the  sentimental  traveler  at  least,  the  hard  and 
sordid  side  of  lives  often  close  to  actual  want.  And 
indeed,  the  primitive  and  natural  labors  of  plowman 
and  reaper,  of  spinner  and  weaver,  of  raftsman  and 
shepherd,  need  no  adornment  to  be  beautiful. 

Sometimes  this  beauty  and  harmony  of  the  simple,   In  any  case 
long-adjusted     conditions     seem    of     supreme     value;  go^F^r  1! 
sometimes  narrowness,  suffering  and  degradation  seem  going 
to   outweigh  their  advantages   tenfold;   just  as  on  the 
other  side,  the  American  side,  one  sometimes  realizes 
only  the  bright  features,  and  again  only  the  shadows  of  our 
tenement  and  industrial  life.     But  beautiful  or  degraded, 
the  primitive  life  is  doomed.     As  household  arts  come 
into  contact  with  the  world  of  competition  and  factory 
production,  they  are  either  blighted,  or  deformed  into 
sweated  house-industries.     All   the   old-world   relations 
of  the  village  are  changing  as  modern  agriculture  with 
capitalistic  methods  gradually  replaces  the  old  and  tech 
nically  wretched  peasant  farming.     Education  is  grad 
ually  drying  up  the  superstition,  and  with  it  the  poetry. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Migration 
a  part  of 
the  world 
process  of 
fusion 


The  per 
sonal  cost 


Yet,  at  the  cost  of  what  is  picturesque,  comfort,  intelli 
gence  and  morality  increase. 

The  change  is  under  way,  and  the  emigration  to 
America  is  one  of  its  accompaniments.  It  is  also  in 
turn  an  accelerating  cause  of  the  change.  Immigration 
is -thus  a  part  of  that  great  leveling  and  fusing  activity 
which  is  one  side  of  the  historical  process.  It  owes  its 
ease  if  not  its  possibility  to  the  cheapness  and  speed 
of  modern  transportation  and  communication,  and  it 
co-operates  with  them  in  wiping  out  local  differences, 
spreading  among  distant  peoples  the  reciprocal  knowledge 
of  one  another,  and  evening  up  their  levels.  As  Tarde 
has  said,  civilization  of  the  prevailing  type  is  becoming 
planetary;  it  has  gone  round  the  globe  and  back  again. 
The  tendency,  as  he  shows,  is  to  differentiate  individuals 
more  sharply  as  individuals,  while  lessening  the  distinc 
tive  differences  that  used  to  mark  country  from  country, 
class  from  class,  even  village  from  village.  Dress  is  a 
symbol  of  the  change.  Instead  of  a  costume,  uniform 
for  all  persons  in  one  locality,  but  unlike  that  of  the  next, 
we  have  one  and  the  same  fashion  from  Paris  to  Fiji, 
and  yet  no  two  persons  dressed  alike,  but  each,  within 
the  limits  of  the  mode,  individually  and  according  to 
personal  circumstances  and  taste. 

If  we  turn  to  simpler  aspects  of  the  question  and  ask, 
"Does  the  individual  emigrant  gain?"  we  have  to  deal 
with  less  vast  if  still  elusive  factors.  In  the  first  place, 
emigration  always  involves  pain;  pain  to  those  who 
go,  and,  above  all,  pain  to  those  who  are  left  behind. 
One  thing  that  Americans  might  with  grace  remember 
is  that  immigrants  are  inevitably  to  some  extent  exiles, 
separated  from  the  old  familiar  scenes  for  which  every 
one  sometimes  yearns,  and  divided,  even  if  the  more 
immediate  family  has  all  been  brought  together,  from 
some  of  those  near  and  dear  to  them.  I  traveled  from 
Vienna  to  Bremen  with  a  group  of  emigrants,  and  I  shall 
never  forget  the  suffering  of  one  little  woman  who  was 
going  to  join  husband  and  children,  but  who  had  just 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         59 

said  goodby  for  life  to  her  mother.     Where  husband  and 
wife,  parents  and  children  are  separated,  it  is  harder  yet. 

Life  among  our  immigrants  is  full  of  such  incidents  as 
one  told  by  Miss  Byington: 

"As  we  waited  in  one  of  the  little  railway  stations  of 
Homestead,  a  Slovak  came  in  and  sat  down  beside  a 
woman  with  a  two-year-old  child.  He  made  shy  ad 
vances  to  the  baby,  coaxing  her  in  a  voice  of  heart 
breaking  loneliness.  She  would  not  come  to  him,  and 
finally  the  mother  took  her  away.  As  they  went,  the 
Slovak  turned  sadly  to  the  rest  of  the  company,  taking 
us  all  into  his  confidence,  and  said  simply,  "Me  wife,  me 
babe,  Hun  gar."  But  were  his  family  in  America,  it 
would  mean  death  for  one  baby  in  three ;  it  would  mean 
hard  work  in  a  little  dirty,  unsanitary  house  for  the 
mother;  it  would  mean  sickness  and  evil.  With  them 
in  Hungary,  it  means  for  him  isolation,  and  loneliness, 
and  the  abnormal  life  of  the  crowded  lodging  house."* 

What  it  means  to  be  in  a  country  where  one  cannot 
speak  the  language  is,  as  many  a  traveler  can  testify, 
a  feeling  that  must  be  experienced  to  be  understood. 
With  me,  a  sort  of  inhibition  of  all  expression  sets  in; 
it  seems 'as  useless  to  gesticulate  or  smile  as  to  speak. 
It  is  almost  as  if  one  could  not  even  think,  so  pervasive 
and  numbing  is  the  sense  that  the  channels  of  communi 
cation  are  blocked. 

I  get  the  impression  that  the  women  are  more  apt  to  be   Women 
homesick  than  the  men,  and  that  in  consequence  wives  ^anse6 
often  make  their  husbands  return  against  their  wishes.  As  hard 
a  matter  of  fact,  I  think  the  women  both  lose  more  and 
gain  less  by  the  change  than  the  men.f     They  do  not  like 
the~Tron  stoves,  which  do  not  bake  such  sweet  bread  as 
their  old  ovens.     They  miss,  I.  think,  the  variety  of  work, 

*Byington,  Margaret  F.:  "The  Mill  Town  Courts  and  Their 
Lodgers."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  page  922  (Feb. 
6,  1909). 

fMr.  Steiner  in  "The  Immigrant  Tide"  brings,  on  the  other 
hand,  much  evidence  to  show  the  special  gain  of  the  women  in 
America  as  regards  their  personal  position. 


6o 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  men 
feel  the 
touch  of 
democracy 


The  hob 
bledehoy 
stage 


employment  within  doors  alternating  with  field  work 
in  sociable  companionship  with  husband  or  lover  and 
neighbors;  the  garden  with  its  row  of  tall  sunflowers  or 
poppies;  the  care  of  the  chickens  and  ducks  and  geese, 
the  pig  and  the  calf ;  and  most  of  all  the  familiar,  sociable 
village  life  where  every  one  knows  every  one  else,  and 
there  are  no  uncomfortable  superior  Yankees  to  abash 
one,  and  where  the  children  do  not  grow  up  to  be  alien 
and  contemptuous. 

The  men  live  more  out  in  the  world.  They  get  more 
from  America  and  perhaps  had  less  to  lose  in  the  old 
conditions.  In  spite  of  the  undemocratic  treatment  of 
immigrants  which  is  too  common  in  the  United  States, 
and  which  sometimes  makes  one's  blood  boil,  they  do 
get  in  America  a  sense  of  being  more  regarded,  of  being 
equals,  that  is  new  and  very  dear  to  them.  To  the  men 
it  often  means  expansion. 

Emigrants  returning  to  Croatia  say  of  America, 
"  There  is  no  sun  there  like  ours,  but  there  is  freedom  and 
justice."  They  comment  on  the  fact  that  employers  and 
officials  treat  them  like  fellow  men,  not  patronizing 
them  nor  treating  them  as  if  rebellious.  So  in  this 
country  a  Croatian  informant  who  could  not  say  hard 
things  enough  about  the  experiences  of  his  fellow 
countrymen  in  Pennsylvania,  yet  said  to  me  with  bright 
ening  eyes,  "But  they  love  their  American  employers. 
The  owner  will  come  in  of  a  morning,  perhaps,  and  say 
'  How  are  you  Mike?  How  is  your  wife?' '  So  far  does 
a  little  consideration  go. 

The  personality  that  the  emigrant  develops  in  America 
is,  I  believe,  in  successful  cases  something  higher,  and  (at 
least  I  wish  to  believe  so)  finer  than  the  old.  But  the 
change  that  takes  place  reminds  me  of  the  process  by 
which  the  individual  grows  from  the  grace  and  simple 
unconsciousness,  the  imperfect  perfection  of  childhood, 
from  its  dependence  and  trustfulness  and  creative  fancy, 
through  the  ugly  period  of  the  shedding  of  teeth  and 
curls,  into  the  hobbledehoy  period  of  conflicting  condi- 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    FROM    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         6l 

tions — self-assertion  and  helplessness,  rationality  and 
ignorance — into  the  transitional  awkwardness  of  self- 
consciousness  and  uneven  development.  Thus  the  emi 
grant,  or  emigrant's  son  or  daughter,  who  is  half 
"Americanized,"  is  often  in  a  disagreeable  phase. 

This  is  often  the  case  with  the  emigrant  who  returns  The  re 
to  the  old  country.  He_is  less  docile,  less  contented, 
perhaps  less  religious,  often  self-assertive  and  rough 
in  manner.  Sometimes  he  gives  himself  airs  as  an  ' 
"American,"  displays  the  silver  dollar  that  adorns  his 
watch-fob,  and  turns  the  heads  of  the  boys  with  his  big 
talk.  I  was  asked  in  Croatia  why  it  was  that  men  who 
came  back  from  America  refused  to  take  off  their  hats 
in  the  bureau  of  an  official.  Some  of  the  old  neighbors 
are  impressed  by  such  displays  of  lack  of  deference; 
others,  especially  superiors,  are  scandalized. 

Often  the  returned  emigrant  is  spoiled  for  hard  work, 
either  by  overstrain  in  America  or  by  a  change  in  his 
views,  but  he  is  also  likely  to  be  more  enterprising  and 
ambitious — qualities  greatly  needed  in  most  Slavic 
villages.  These  peasants  of  Austria  and  Hungary,  and 
above  all  of  Russia,  are  not  in  the  least  accustomed 
to  initiating  anything  themselves.  "  Why  do  you  people 
not  mend  that  hole  in  the  road  where  everyone  has  broken 
down  regularly  for  years?"  said  a  traveler  in  a  Croatian 
village  (so  runs  the  story).  "No  one  told  us  to  do  it, 
sir."  Again  take  Miss  Bowie's  story  of  a  Ruthenian 
who  was  asked  what  he  would  charge  to  shingle  a  roof. 
He  was  dismayed  at  the  idea  of  undertaking  such  a  con 
tract,  and  refused  to  make  any  estimate.  A  Jew  was 
then  given  the  contract,  and  he  came  to  the  same  man 
and  offered  him  a  fixed  sum,  which  was  accepted,  for 
shingles  and  shingling,  making  of  course  his  own  profit 
on  the  business. 

The  fact  is,  many  Slavs  are  really  living  largely  in  the  Slavs,  pre- 
pre-commercial  age,  where  there  is  no  fixed  scale  of  and  Tom-3" 
values,  and  where  every  possession  has  its  own  incom-  mercialized 
mensurable  worth  to  its  owner,  who  has  never  bought  or 


62 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Effects  on 
the  prop 
ertied  class 


America's 
responsi 
bility 


sold  it,  or  thought  of  doing  so.  American  life  is  a  whole 
business  college  to  men  from  such  an  environment,  but 
not  always  an  ennobling  one. 

The  ruling  classes,  especially  the  landlords,  dislike 
the  emigration  movement,  not  only  because  the  returned 
emigrant  is  less  docile,  but  because  they  suffer  by  the 
diminution  of  the  labor  supply  and  the  consequent  rise 
of  wages.  Indeed,  the  large  land-owner  who  farms  for 
profit  is  caught  between  the  upper  and  nether  mill 
stone.  .  Grain  from  America,  North  and  South,  has 
lowered  prices,  and  wages  have  increased.  Too  often  the 
aristocratic  landlord  is  unbusinesslike  and  self-indul 
gent,  a  poor  manager.  The  consequence  is  that  large 
estates  frequently  come  into  the  market  through  bank 
ruptcy,  and  are  bought  up  by  peasants  in  small  lots 
with  American  money.* 

The  question  of  how  this  emigration  affects  America 
is  the  subject  of  the  second  part  of  this  study,  but  one 
point  that  may  well  be  emphasized  both  there  and  here 
is  that  the  cost  of  the  emigrant's  education  need  not.be 
so  great.  Even  if,  in  spite  of  the  change  sometimes 
making  itself  felt  in  childish  and  disagreeable  forms, 
his  gain  in  the  happier  cases  outweighs  his  loss,  yet  the 
loss  is  apt  to  be  great  and,  at  least  in  many  cases,  quite 
unnecessarily  great.  It  is  not  a  law  of  nature  that  the 
transition  should  involve  so  much  that  is  brutalizing  and 
demoralizing  as  it  does  in  our  slums  and  our  mills. 
Never  did  I  feel  that  the  function  and  the  opportunity 
of  the  social  settlement  were  so  great  as  in  meeting  these 
people,  at  once  so  ready  and  able  to  learn  of  Americans, 
and  in  America  so  seldom  having  an  opportunity  to 
come  into  touch  with  what  is  best  in  America. 

*  For  instances  see  page  144.  Interesting  pictures  of  the 
difficulties  of  gentleman  farmers  in  Poland,  Hungary  and  Ger 
many  respectively  will  be  found  in  three  remarkable  novels: 
Freytag's  "Debit  and  Credit,"  Baroness  Orczy's  "A  Son  of 
the  Soil,"  and  Fritz  Reuter's  "Ut  Mine  Stromtid"  (translated 
under  various  titles  as  "Seed  Time  and  Harvest"  or  as  "An 
Old  Story  of  My  Farming  Days"). 


CHAPTER  V 
BOHEMIAN  EMIGRATION 

On  a  brilliant  autumn  day,  with  white  clouds  chasing  A  walk  in 
through  the  splendid  blue  above,  and  the  stream  beside  Bohemia 
us  running  as  gayly  as  the  blood  in  our  veins,  we  started 
out  for  a  tramp  in  the  neighborhood  of  Strakonice,  in 
Southern  Bohemia,  to  learn  what  we  could  of  emigra 
tion  from  that  vicinity. 

With  us  went  an  old  workingman  who  was  to  take  us 
to  visit  various  families  who  had  been  in  America  them 
selves  or  who  had  members  there.  He  not  only  knew  the 
neighborhood  and  its  people,  but  was  much  interested 
in  our  errand — for  he  had  six  children  in  the  United 
States. 

As  we  left  the  orchard  path  beside  the  brook,  and 
struck  across  by  field  tracks  to  the  nearest  village,  we 
had  to  ask  our  way  now  and  again  of  a  man  doing  his 
fall  ploughing,  or  a  woman  at  work  among  her  cabbages. 
The  countryside  was  widespread  and  rolling,  with  a 
wooded  hill  dark  on  the  horizon,  and  everywhere  about 
us  open  fields,  now  bare  of  crops.  The  village  itself, 
characteristically  clustered  about  an  irregular  open 
space,  was  given  a  forlorn  appearance  by  the  traces  of 
a  recent  fire  such  as  are  all  too  common  in  these  close- 
built  settlements,  but  the  low  houses  with  their  farm 
yards  and  outbuildings  looked  pleasant  and  homelike. 

We  found  the  one  we  wanted  and  were  hospitably  Families  of 
welcomed  by  a  friendly  elderly  peasant  woman,  kerchief 
on  head.  As  we  drank  the  great  mugs  of  cream  which 
she  set  before  us,  and  ate  her  good  rye  bread,  we  heard 
all  about  the  daughter  settled  in  New  York,  and  saw 
pictures  of  her,  first  in  her  pre-American  stage  as  a  heavy- 
faced,  ill-dressed  girl;  then  in  America  with  her  husband 

63 


64  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

(a  band-master)  and  her  child,  all  three  with  faces  in 
telligent  and  refined  as  well  as  good;  and  finally,  as  a 
widow  in  a  position  of  some  responsibility  in  a  hotel. 

This  was  one  of  the  most  marked  cases  that  I  have 
met,  where  the  pictures  seemed  to  indicate  a  great  per 
sonal  advance.  Too  often,  when  one  contrasts  a  pho 
tograph  of  relatives  in  America  with  the  home  sur 
roundings  that  it  is  supposed  to  adorn,  the  impression 
left  is  that  while  there  is  plenty  of  gain  in  comfort 
and  in  the  standard  of  expenditure,  the  advantages  as 
regards  grace  of  bearing,  real  beauty  of  dress,  and  per 
sonal  dignity,  are  all  in  favor  of  the  peasant  stay-at- 
homes. 

At  another  house  we  found  a  woman  threshing 
beside  her  brother-in-law.  She  had  left  her  husband 
and  two  daughters  in  Nebraska,  and  returned  to  look 
after  her  old  mother,  but  expected  soon  to  rejoin  her 
husband  in  the  United  States. 

Another  house  was  the  home  of  a  family  decidedly 
better  off,  with  the  ample  barns  which  are  the  sign  of 
successful  farming  the  world  over.  Our  time  was 
getting  short  and  we  had  only  a  talk  at  the  doorway 
with  the  housemother.  Her  youngest  daughter  was 
going  to  America  the  next  week  to  join  an  elder  sister, 
traveling  with  a  girl  friend  from  the  next  village.  "  Was 
there  any  chance  that  they  could  go  with  us?"  we  were 
asked. 

Our  guide  All  of  this  was  interesting  to  us,  but  what  we  enjoyed 
most  in  the  day  was  our  guide.  His  talk,  in  the  more 
or  less  imperfect  German  which  even  quite  "unedu 
cated"  Bohemians  generally  command,  was  racy  and 
delightful,  partly  from  its  curious  blending  of  ele 
ments,  partly  from  his  entertaining  and  kindly 
personality. 

Now  he  gave  us  the  story  of  his  uncle  who  went  to 
America  in  1852,  one  of  those  who  made  up  the  first 
large  wave  of  over-sea  emigration  from  Bohemia.  A 
shoemaker  by  trade,  he  sold  his  house  and  went  out 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  65 

with  his  wife  and  two  children.  According  to  our 
guide's  account  he  had  various  affairs  with  the  Indians 
as  he  traveled  westward  in  his  prairie  schooner,  includ 
ing,  if  I  remember  rightly,  a  gift  from  him  of  one  of  the 
precious  chickens  which  he  carried  with  him  in  a  cage, 
and  a  return  gift  from  the  Indians  of  a  nugget  of  gold 
done  up  in  a  cover  of  pitch.  He  became  a  farmer, 
but  later,  after  an  exciting  career  during  the  Civil  War 
selling  provisions  and  carrying  pay  to  the  Confederates, 
he  met  his  death — by  hanging,  as  is  supposed. 

Intermixed  with  these  pictures  of  Western  life  were 
stories  of  ghosts  and  devils,  told  with  all  the  appearance 
of  the  most  naive  belief.  Whether  this  was  the  art  that 
conceals  art  or  not,  we  were  never  sure.  The  legend  of 
the  Strakonice  bagpiper  who  piped  to  Satan  and  his 
companions  is  one  of  the  best  known  bits  of  Bohemian 
folklore.  I  preferred  the  account  of  the  girl  wrho, 
coming  home  one  evening  by  the  very  path  that  we 
were  then  on,  suddenly  felt  a  hobgoblin  leap  upon  her 
shoulders,  and  found  herself  obliged  to  attend  person 
ally  to  the  founding  of  three  chapels  (duly  pointed  out 
to  us),  in  order  that  the  soul  of  a  blind  man,  who  had 
been  unjustly  hanged  for  a  church  robbery,  might  find 
rest.  The  event  had  such  an  air  of  actuality  that  it 
might  have  been  chronicled  in  yesterday's  Abendblatt. 

Our  guide  was  a  Socialist,  and  quite  of  the  twentieth 
century  in  his  politics.  Nevertheless,  as  an  old  soldier, 
he  had  never  shaken  off  his  admiration  of  the 
emperor,  which  was  evident  as  he  told  us  of  various 
occasions  on  which  he  had  seen  him,  as  well  as  in  the 
greeting  which  he  sent  us  after  our  departure — a  postal 
card  with  a  picture  of  His  Majesty  on  horseback. 

On  the  long  home  tramp  he  talked  to  us  again  of  A  father  of 
his  relatives  in  America.     There  are  twelve  of  them  there,   emisrants 
six  of  them  his  own  children,  and  he  has  a  wThole  box  of 
letters  from  them. 

One  nephew,  who  is  a  little  "  leichtsinnig, "  fought  in 
the  Philippines.     One  sister  has  a  pension  on  account 
5 


66 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Bohemian 


In  colonial 
America 


of  her  husband's  service  in  the  Civil  War.  A  son  is  a 
turner  by  trade  and  lives  in  Minnesota,  as  do  various 
other  members  of  the  family.  The  rest  are  in 
"Nevyork." 

Apparently  all  are  doing  well  in  the  world;  the 
tragedy  is  on  the  personal  side  —  in  the  parting  felt  to 
be  almost  as  hopeless  as  death  itself.  One  married 
daughter  in  the  West  had  ceased  to  write.  About  the 
youngest  girl,  evidently  rather  flighty  even  at  home, 
he  was  heartsore  and  anxious.  He  showed  us  a  letter 
in  English,  written  by  her,  which  he  asked  us  to  read  to 
him.  It  had  been  mailed  to  him  by  mistake,  being 
intended  for  a  young  man,  making  an  appointment  to 
meet  at  a  street  corner  on  the  East  Side.  Our  guide  had 
surmised  as  much  for  himself. 

We  had  naturally  supposed,  when  he  took  a  day's 
leave  from  his  regular  work  to  tramp  the  country-side 
with  us,  that  it  was  to  be  a  business  arrangement.  But 
no,  he  would  not  hear  of  such  a  thing.  He  could  hardly 
bid  us  goodby.  "It  seems  to  me  in  a  sort  of  way  as  if 
you  came  from  my  girls  in  America,"  he  said;  and, 
with  a  catch  in  his  old  voice,  "It  is  hard  to  lose  six 
children  all  at  once." 

I  have  been  tempted  to  tell  this  episode  at  length 
1°ecause  ^  stands  for  so  many  similar  experiences  and 
talks.  One  point  in  which  it  is  characteristic  of  Bohe 
mian  emigration  is  in  reaching  back  into  a  comparatively 
distant  past.  Of  all  Slavic  emigration  to  America  (as 
well  as  of  all  from  Austria  whether  Slavic  or  not),  that 
from  Bohemia  was  the  first  to  be  of  importance,  and  in 
the  fifties,  the  day  of  the  uncle  of  this  tale,  it  was  already 
very  considerable. 

There  had,  indeed,  been  stray  Bohemian  colonists  in 
America  from  almost  the  earliest  times.*  And  while 
these  men  are  interesting  mainly  to  the  antiquarian,  it 

*  Further  accounts  of  Bohemian  emigrants,  in  connection 
with  their  settlements  in  the  United  States,  will  be  found  in 
Chapters  XI,  XII,  and  XIII. 


AUGUSTINE  HERMAN 

Portrait  of  Augustine  Herman  said  to  be  drawn  by  himself.      Reproduced  from 
Capek's  "  Pamatky  Cesky  Emigrantu  v  America." 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  67 

is  worth  while  to  bear  in  mind  that  "the  fathers"  were 
not  all  English;  that  even  the  French,  Dutch,  Spanish 
and  Swedish  settlers  by  no  means  completely  exhaust  our 
colonial  genealogy. 

Moreover  these  men,  although  of  no  actual  historical 
importance  to  America,  are  picturesque  figures  link 
ing  the  stories  of  old-world  countries  and  new.*  The 
defeat  of  the  Battle  of  the  White  Mountain  in  1620,  at 
which  German  Catholicism  triumphed  over  the  Chekh 
Reformers,  subjected  Bohemia  for  more  than  two  cen 
turies  to  a  regime  of  persecution  and  oppression.  The 
old  Bohemian  nobility,  executed  or  exiled  for  their 
Hussite  faith,  were  ruthlessly  rooted  out,  and  replaced 
by  a  carpet-bag  foreign  nobility  who  received  practi 
cally  all  the  great  landed  estates  of  the  nation  as  a 
return  for  services  in  court  or  camp.  Thousands  of 
valuable  volumes  were  burned  by  Jesuit  fanatics,  the 
profession  of  any  religion  but  the  Roman  Catholic  was 
effectually  repressed,  and  36,000  families,  of  which  185 
were  of  the  nobility  or  gentry,  emigrated,  many  of  them 
to  Holland. 

Of  these  exiles  from  Bohemia  and  Moravia  the  most  Harvard's 
famous  was  the  great  Comenius  or  Komensky,  who 
came  near  being  president  of  Harvard  College.  Cotton 
Mather  writes  in  his  "  Ecclesiastical  History  of  New  Eng 
land  "  (page  128),  "  That  brave  old  man,  Johannes  Amos 
Comenius,  the  fame  of  whose  worth  hath  been  Trumpetted 
as  far  as  more  than  Three  Languages  (Whereof  every  one 
is  endebted  unto  his  Janua)  could  carry  it,  was  agreed 
withal  by  our  Mr.  Winthrop,  in  his  travels  through  the 
Low  Countries,  to  come  over  into  New  England  and 
Illuminate  this  Colledge  and  Country  in  the  quality  of 
President:  But  the  Solicitations  of  the  Swedish  ambas- 

*  The  details  of  the  lives  of  all  these  early  Bohemian-Ameri 
cans  have  been  carefully  worked  out  by  Mr.  Thomas  Capek  of 
New  York  in  a  little  volume  written,  unfortunately  for  us,  in 
Bohemian:  "Pamatky  Ceskych  Emigrantu  v  Americe."  1907. 
A  number  of  references  drawn  from  this  book  are  included  in 
the  Bibliography  under  Bohemians  in  the  U.  S. 


68 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Augustine 
Herman 


Frederick 
Phillips 


sador,  diverting  him  another  way,  that  Incomparable 
Moravian  became  not  an  American."* 

In  all  probability,  too,  Augustine  Herman  of  Prague, 
who  came  to  "New  Amsterdam"  in  1633,  was  one  of 
this  group.  A  surveyor,  he  was  present  at  the  purchase 
of  the  site  of  Philadelphia  from  the  Indians,  and  in  re 
turn  for  his  services  in  making  for  Lord  Baltimore  the 
first  map  of  Maryland  he  was  given  a  patent  for  an 
estate  of  some  twenty  thousand  acres,  partly  in  Mary 
land,  partly  in  Delaware,  the  celebrated  Bohemia 
Manor.  Other  estates  he  called  Little  Bohemia  and 
Three  Bohemian  Sisters.  The  rivers  on  which  they  lie 
are  still  called  by  the  names  he  gave  them,  Big  Bohemia 
River  and  Little  Bohemia  River.  He  was  connected 
with  the  West  India  Company,  and  claimed  to  be  the 
"founder  of  the  tobacco  business  in  Virginia."  His 
tobacco  warehouse  was  in  New  York  at  what  is  now 
33—35  Pearl  Street.  He  and  his  descendants  were  con 
nected  by  marriage  or  descent  with  the  most  prominent 
families,  the  Bayards,  the  Virginia  Randolphs,  and  many 
others. 

About  twenty-five  years  later  than  Herman  came 
Bedfich  Filip  (Anglicized  as  Frederick  Phillips).  John 
Jay,  the  first  supreme  justice  of  the  United  States, 
whose  wife  Sara  Livingstone  was  descended  from 
Phillips,  wrote:  "The  first  ancestor  of  this  family  who 
settled  in  this  country  was  Frederick  Flypson,  a  native 
of  Bohemia,  where  his  family  being  Protestants  were 
persecuted.  His  mother  becoming  a  widow  was  con 
strained  to  quit  Bohemia  with  him  and  her  other  chil 
dren.  She  fled  to  Holland  with  what  little  property 
she  could  save  from  the  wreck  of  their  estate.  The 
amount  of  that  little  not  admitting  her  to  provide 
better  for  Frederick,  she  bound  him  to  a  carpenter, 
and  he  became  an  excellent  workman.  He  emigrated 
to  New  York,  which  was  then  under  the  Dutch  govern 
ment,  "f  In  America  he  became  rich,  being  called  "the 

*  Quoted  by  Capek,  page  3.  f  Quoted  by  Capek,  page  67. 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  69 

Bohemian  merchant  prince."  He  married  Catherine 
van  Cortland  and  built  two  fine  colonial  mansions, 
one  the  so-called  "Castle  Phillipse"  at  Phillipsburgh, 
and  one  which  the  city  of  Yonkers  later  bought  and 
used  as  the  City  Hall.  His  descendant,  the  beautiful 
Marie  Phillips  who  refused  the  hand  of  George  Wash 
ington,  is  the  heroine  of  Fenimore  Cooper's  "The  Spy." 
With  the  Tory  proclivities  of  the  family  in  the  Revolu 
tion  its  importance  in  the  male  line  ceased,  though  its 
blood  flows  in  many  distinguished  families. 

The  Moravian  brethren  who  went  as  missionaries  to  Moravian 
America  in  1736,  while  they  represent  a  spiritual  in- 
heritance  from  that  which  is  most  central  in  Bohemian 
experience,  the  Hussite  movement,  went  from  Germany, 
and  were  themselves  largely  either  German  or  German 
ized.  Matej  Stach,  however,  the  first  missionary  to 
Greenland,  who  died  among  the  Brethren  in  South 
Carolina  in  1787,  was  born  in  Moravia.* 

Memory  has  been  preserved  of  a  few  other  stray 
emigrants  to  America  in  the  early  nineteenth  century :  a 
Bohemian  associate  of  John  Jacob  Astor;  Dr.  Dignovity 
of  San  Antonio,  Texas,  physician  and  author  (arrived 
New  York,  1832);  and  Professor  Hruby,  of  Oxford 
University,  Ohio  (arrived  Baltimore,  1834).! 

In  spite  of  stray  emigrants  there  was  nothing  that  Effects  of 
could  be  called  an  emigration  movement  from  Bohemia 
till  the  revolutionary  years  1848-9.  At  this  time 
there  was  a  triple  ferment  in  Bohemia:  first,  a  desire) 
for  political  independence;  second,  a  resurrection  of 
national  self-consciousness  symbolized  by  the  revival 
of  the  Bohemian  language,  the  use  of  which  among 
cultivated  people  had  been  abandoned  for  German; 
and  third,  a  spirit  of  religious  questioning  and  vehement 
challenge  of  current  Christianity,  largely  due  to  reaction 
against  the  corrupt  and  benighted  influence  of  Austrian 
clericalism. 

*For  further  details  of  this  movement  see  page  208.  . 
f  Capek,  pages  98-112. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Abolition  of 
serfdom 


Gold 
discovery 


Movement 
of  the  fifties 
and  sixties 


These  years  brought  from  Bohemia,  as  from  other 
countries,  political  refugees,  some  of  them  choice  spirits. 
One  of  the  most  influential,  not  in  America,  but  in 
Bohemia,  was  Vojta  Naprstek,  who,  after  ten  years  in 
the  United  States,  returned  to  Prague  to  devote  his  life 
to -the  spread  of  enlightenment  and  liberty,  in  which  he 
felt  that  America  had  much  to  teach.  His  main  visible 
monuments  are  an  industrial  museum  and  a  library, 
both  in  Prague, 'carried  on  by  his  widow  in  the  spirit 
of  international  hospitality  until  her  recent  death.  The 
Bohemian  poet  Zeyer  wrote  for  his  urn  this  beautiful 
inscription:  "What  remains  of  the  body  can  be  easily 
put  into  a  small  vessel,  yet  his  great  heart  carried  in 
itself  the  whole  world."* 

Emigration  at  this  time  may  have  been  quickened  by 
two  other  influences  besides  those  of  the  revolutionary 
activity  of  the  period.  The  first  pf  these  was  the  aboli 
tion  in  1848  of  serfdom  arid  labor  dues  in  Bohemia, 
which,  for  the  first  time,  gave  the  peasant  his  personal 
freedom.  The  effect  of  this  on  .emigration  was,  however, 
probably  slight,  as  the  law  did  not  yet  grant  the  right  to 
emigrate  at  will.  This  was  first  conceded  in  1867,  and 
then  subject  to  requirements  of  military  service  and  of 
passports. 

The  second  possible  influence  was  the  discovery  of 
gold  in  California  in  1849,  which  is  said  to  have  brought 
Bohemian  gold  seekers  and  to  have  stimulated  the 
activity  of  ship  agents.  The  census  of  1850  mentions 
87  natives  of  Austria  (out  of  946  in  the  United  States), 
as  then  in  California;  these  were  probably  Bohemians. 

Throughout  the  fifties  and  early  sixties  there  was  a 
pretty  steady  outflow  from  Bohemia;  most  of  this  was 
directed  to  the  United  States,  though  in  the  early  sixties 
many  tried  for  a  time  going  to  Russia,  apparently  not 
with  very  happy  results.  In  the  ten  years  1850-1860, 
the  United  States  census  showred  a  gain  of  nearly  25,000 


*Cf.  Humpal-Zeman,  Josef  a:  "Bohemia:    a  Stir  of  Its  Social 
Conscience."     The  Commons,  July,  1904. 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  71 

natives  of  Austria,  which  practically,  at  this  time,  means 
Bohemians.* 

In  the  home  districts  the  early  emigration  is  by  no  Stories  of 
means  forgotten,  as  we  have  seen,  and  pioneer  relatives 
are  all  the  more  remembered  because  the  proverbial 
uncle  in  America  is  a  better  source  of  hopeful  dreams 
than  any  castle  in  Spain.  In  Domazlice,  in  1905,  we 
were  given  a  very  interesting  account  of  the  movement 
by  a  man  who  was  semi-professionally  acquainted  with 
the  circumstances: 

"The  earliest  went  from  here  in  1845  m  a  sailing 
ship  and  were  many  weeks  at  sea.  Forty  or  fifty  years 
ago  it  was  an  epidemic.  Then  the  whole  family  went 
at  once,  while  now  the  son  commonly  goes  first,  then  the 
daughter,  then  the  parents.  Most  older  people  who 
emigrate  now  are  going  out  to  join  their  children.  ..The 
first  to  emigrate  were  handwerker,  [which  would  mean 
carpe'nters,  tailors,  shoemakers,  butchers,  smiths,  weav 
ers,  etc.]  Peasants,  [or  as  we  should  say,  farmers,]  at 
first  would  not  hear  of  America;  they  only  began  to  go 
in  the  sixties.  The  early  emigrants  generally  settled  in 
f1Te~country,  while  now  they  go  to  the  cities.  It  was 
a  hard  business  then.  There  were  no  relatives  to  go  to 
as  there  are  now.  But  the  children  learned  the  lan 
guage,  'und  sie  haben's  gut  g'habt.'"  The  grandson  of 
one  early  emigrant  who  had  recently  returned  on  a  visit 
was  evidently  a  shining  example  of  this  good  fortune. 

In  general  the  earlier  emigration  now  seems  remote, 
and  indeed,  it  never  had  much  reaction  on  the  home 
country.  For  instance  one  man  who  went  out  about 
1855  has  sons  in  the  state  of  Washington,  but  the  fam 
ily  do  not  write  home  to  Bohemia  any  more.  All  their 
ties  with  the  old  country  are  broken ;  they  have  never 
been  back  and  would  know  no  one  if  they  came. 

Another  informant  was  a  tailor,   one  of  the  last  of 

*  As  is  shown  by  Buzek,  in  "Das  Auswanderungsproblem  und 
die  Regelung  des  Auswanderungswesen  in  Osterreich,"  pages 
445-448. 


The  Bohe 
mian  emi 
grated  to 
settle 


Emigration  \ 
after  the 
Prussian 
War 


72  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

those  who  know  how  to  make  the  pretty  peasant  cos 
tumes  of  this  region  about  Domazlice,  where  almost 
alone  in  Bohemia  the  old  dress  has  not  become  obsolete. 
He  was  a  quaint  and  attractive  figure,  bending  with  his 
big  spectacles  over  his  gay  silk  embroidery,  or  raising 
his  intelligent,  deeply  lined  face  to  talk  of  the  old  days  or 
of  his  son,  now  a  priest  in  America. 

In  1854  went  the  first  five  families  from  his  place, 
all  to  Ohio;  in  1866  went  three  families,  also  to  Ohio; 
the  next  year  three  families  and  four  lads,  one  to  Ohio. 
One  has  a  brewery,  the  rest  farms.  In  1880  three  more 
families  went  to  Ohio.  This  represents  the  contribu 
tion,  or  part  of  it,  of  one  little  neighborhood. 

While  one  must  beware  of  accepting  the  experience  of 
individuals  as  the  criterion  for  a  whole  mass  of  facts, 
the  impression  here  given  that  Bohemian  emigration, 
and  especially  the  early  emigration,  has  been  a  move 
ment  of  settlers,  whole  families  going  together,  is  borne 
out  by  all  that  we  know,  and  notably  by  the  large  pro 
portion  of  women,  children  and  old  persons  that  has 
always  characterized  Bohemian  immigration  to  the 
United  States. 

For  the  epidemic  character  of  the  earlier  movement 
there  is  also  other  evidence,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  the  government  tried  to  check  the  movement 
by  having  it  preached  against  from  the  pulpit — natur 
ally  without  effect. 

With    1867    came    a    fresh    impulse    to    emigration. 

1  Besides  the  newly  granted  right  to  leave  the  country 
freely,  the  disastrous  war  with  Prussia  in  1866  gave 
added  reasons  for  going,  while  in  the  United  States 
the  Civil  War  was  over  and  everything  invited  the 

l;  settler.  For  the  fourteen  years  before  1867  the  Aus 
trian  emigration  figures  averaged  something  over 
2,000  a  year,  in  1867  they  rose  to  over  7,000,  and  for 
the  fourteen  years  1867  to  1880  they  averaged  over 
4,000.  The  real  increase  was  doubtless  greater  than 
the  figures  show,  since  the  registers, — the  so-called 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  73 

Emigrations  Tabellen* — kept  by  the  Austrian  authorities, 
became  much  less  complete  after  the  freedom  of  move 
ment  granted  in  1867  and  were  abandoned  as  useless  in 
1884. 

These  figures  are  for  Bohemian  emigration  to  all 
countries,  and  as  already  said,  emigration  in  the  early 
sixties  was  largely  directed  to  Russia.  The  figures  for 
the  ports  of  embarkation  do  not  give  data  for  Bohe 
mians  separately. 

The  American  census  first  gives  figures  for  natives  of  American 
Bohemia  in  1870;  at  that  time  over  40,000  were  already 
in  the  United  States.  According  to  the  same  census 
figures,  the  decade  1870-1880  added  45,000,  1880-1890 
not  quite  33,000,  and  the  last  decade  not  quite  38,000, 
with  a  total  of  nearly  157,000  Bohemians  in  this  country 
in  1900.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  decade  1870  to  1880 
brought  the  largest  contingent. 

Although  Bohemia  appears  in  the  census  schedules  in  Statistics  of 
1870,  it  is  not  till  1882  that  the  figures  of  the  United  i^^ation 
States    immigration    authorities    distinguish    Bohemia  authorities 
among  the  countries  of  origin  of  immigrants,  so  that 
American  data  begin  just  before  the  Austrian  data  fail 
us.     The   annual    emigration    from    Bohemia   into   the 
United  States  fluctuates  from  under  7,000  in   1882  to 
nearly  12,000  in  1891,  and  8000  in  1892.     Then  came  the 
panic  of  1893,  which  seems  to  have  made  itself  increas 
ingly  felt  till  1897,  when  the  numbers  had  declined  to 
under  2,000. 

In  1898  a  new  change  was  made  in  the  statistics  of 
the  immigration  authorities.  Beginning  with  1899,  the  L 
number  of  immigrants  coming  from  Bohemia  is  no  longer 
given,  but  there  is  instead  a  careful  classification  by 
races  and  nationalities.  This  includes  a  group,  "Bo- 
hemiaftTS~aTrd  Moravians. ' ' 

This  brings  us  to  the  difficulty  involved  in  the  word   Who  is  a 
Bohemian.     Of  the  population  of  over  6,000,000  inhab-   Bohemian? 
iting  Bohemia,  not  quite  two-thirds  are  Bohemians  or 
*  See  Appendix  V,  page  433. 


74 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Bohemians 
not  Gipsies 


Chekhs  by  race,  or  more  properly  by  language.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Chekhs  of  Bohemia  are  only  a  part  of 
the  fairly  homogeneous  Slavic  population  which  makes 
up  the  population  of  most  of  Moravia  and  western  Silesia, 
as  well  as  of  Bohemia  (see  Map  III,  page  32). 

This  situation  makes  great  confusion,  and  the  term 
Bohemian  covers  quite  a  different  whole,  according  as 
it  refers  to  a  territorial  or  to  a  racial  and  linguistic 
group.  The  classification  "  Bohemians  and  Moravians" 
made  in  our  immigration  reports  means  the  latter 
group.  That  is,  it  includes  practically  all  persons 
speaking  the  Bohemian  or  Chekh  language,  or  choosing 
to  be  reckoned  with  them;  most  of  these  come  from 
Bohemia  and  Moravia.  It  does  not  include  Germans, 
Jews  and  other  non-Bohemians  coming  to  us  from 
Bohemia.  These  appear  under  the  appropriate  headings. 

Perhaps  attention  should  also  be  called  to  the  curious 
fate  of  words,  which  has  given  the  name  Bohemian  to 
the  gipsies  who,  coming  to  France  across  Bohemia, 
came  to  be  known  there  as  Bohemians.  Anything  less 
Bohemian  in  the  French  sense  than  the  conservative  and 
retiring  home  life  of  the  Chekh  can  hardly  be  imagined. 

The  figures  for  Bohemian  and  Moravian  immigrants 
to  the  United  States  from  the  time  the  new  classification 
was  made  are  as  follows : 

TABLE    5.— BOHEMIAN    AND    MORAVIAN  IMMIGRANT 

ALIENS  ADMITTED  TO  THE  UNITED  STATES, 

1899-1909.* 

YEAR  ENDED  No.  OF 
JUNE  30,                                                                              IMMIGRANTS 

1899 2,526 

1900 3,o6o 

1901 3,766 

1902 5.59° 

iQ°3 9-591 

1904 n, 911 

1905 11.757 

1906 12,958 

i9°7 I3-554 

1908 10,164  • 

1909 6,850 

*  Note  the  steady  rise,  from  two  and  a  half  thousand  in  1899 

up  to  thirteen  and  a  half  thousand  in  1907  the  year  of  the  last 

depression,  and  the  progressive  decline  since. 


u 


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111 


Beg 
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°  v~ 

•oo  2 


7. 

<  g  '     (D.iJ 

S  OJ  O^  >> 

"J  >,TI  w  «« 

g  -"<rt 

CC 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  75 

Geographically,  Bohemia-. is  made  up  of  a  central  The  country 
plain  surrounded  by  ranges  of  mountains  or  hills. 
It  may  be  noted  on  Map  III  that  the  German  settlements, 
which  go  back  to  the  early  thirteenth  century  at  least, 
are  mainly  along  the  frontiers  where  also  the  greater 
part  of  the  industry  and  a  large  part  of  the  mines-  are 
to  be  found.  In  a  general  way  the  land  slopes  downward 
toward  the  north,  which  is  not  only  lower  but  warmer 
and  more  fertile  than  the  southern  parts  of  the  country!" 
the  mountains  protecting  it  from  the  cold  winds  to  which 
the  latter  are  exposed.* 

It  is  mainly  from  the  little-favored  southern  dis-  Geography 
tricts-  that  emigrants  come,  and  have  come  from  the 
begmnmg/f"  In  1853  and  1854  nearly  three-quarters 
came  from  about  Pilsen  and  Budweis;  and  the  same 
region,  together  with  that  about  Tabor  and  Pisek  and 
Kuttenberg  and  Caslau,  seems  still  to  send  the  bulk 
of  the  emigration.  That  is,  it  comes  mainly  from  dis 
tricts  which  are  Chekh  rather  than  German,  agricul 
tural  rather  than  industrial,  and  notoriously  infertile. 
Milcin,  a  town  a  little  to  the  north  of  Tabor,  is  sup 
posed  to  be  the  coldest  spot  in  the  country,  and  is 
called  the  "Bohemian  Siberia."  In  the  district  about 
Pisek  one  sees  wide  stretches  of  apparently  unusable 
land,  and  indeed,  pisek  is  the  Bohemian  word  for  sand. 

The  causes  of  Bohemian  emigration  are  not  far  to  Causes 
seek,  at  least  in  a  general  way.     While,  as  we  have  seen,   e 
political  factors  have  played  a  part  at  times,  this  move- 

*  In  area  Bohemia  is  somewhat  less  than  half  as  large  as 
Ohio,  or  more  than  twice  as  large  as  Massachusetts  (Massachu 
setts,  22,133  square  kilometers;  Bohemia,  51,967;  Ohio,  106,- 
240),  in  population  more  than  equal  to  Pennsylvania  and 
not  far  from  equal  to  New  York  (figures  for  1900,  Pennsylvania, 
6,302,115;  Bohemia,  6,318,697;  New  York,  7,268,894).  This 
makes  it  more  dense  than  any  American  state  except  Massachu 
setts  and  Rhode  Island,  which  exceed  it.  (Inhabitants  to  a 
square  kilometer:  Bohemia,  122;  Massachusetts,-  127;  Rhode 
Island,  133;  Belgium,  237.) 

t  Map  V  (page  35),  shows  the  local  distribution  of  recent 
Bohemian  emigration.  With  this  may  be  compared  Map  III, 
(page  32),  showing  Chekh  and  German  population,  and  Map  IV 
(opp.  page  35),  showing  topographical  character  of  the  country. 


76 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Emigration 
related  to 
economic 
changes  in 
Bohemia 


Character 
of  move 
ment 


ment,  like  Slavic  emigration  in  general,  has  been 
essentially  an  economic  one.  At  first  the  great  induce 
ment  was  the  opportunity  to  get  land  in  America  free, 
oTflat"Teast"for  small  sums,  and  the  settlement  in  the 
United  States  was  characteristically  agricultural,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that,  as  has  been  said,  Bohemian 
peasants  rarely  emigrated  in  the  early  days.  For  a 
movement  of  this  sort  no  further  grounds  are  necessary 
than  those  already  discussed,  at  home  political  unrest, 
in  America  promising  openings,  and  the  opportunity — • 
and  the  knowledge  of  the  opportunity — of  getting  here. 

As  the  movement  progressed,  the  industrial  -element 
as  contrasted  with  the  agricultural  has  come,  more  to 
the  fore.  In  America  the  best  of  the  openings  for  home 
steaders  have  long  been  exhausted,  and  the  general 
trend  toward  city  life  and  the  vast  expansion  of  in 
dustrial  opportunities  have  naturally  turned  immigra 
tion  in  this  direction. 

Bohemia  at  the  same  time  has  been  making  the. fate 
ful  transition  from  a  mainly  agricultural  to  a  mainly  in 
dustrial  country,  and  this  change  has  been  accompanied 
by  the  usual  shifting  of  population  from  country  to  city, 
from  agricultural  to  industrial  districts.  Of  the  whole 
population  only  about  one-half  are  living  where  they 
were  born,*  and  doubtless  a  chance  to  earn  more  has 
been  the  cause  of  the  move  in  most  cases.  While  in 
1869  agriculture  and  forestry  occupied  54.44  per  cent 
of  the  population,  in  1900  the  proportion  had  sunk  to 
41.12  per  cent.f 

Naturally,  therefore,  the  later  Bohemian  immigration 
has  been  of  a  somewhat  different  character  from  the 
earlier;  more  industrial,  more  urban.  Large  city 
colonies  began  to  form  among  American  Bohemians, 
the  Chicago  and  New  York  colonies  becoming  important 
apparently  in  the  seventies. 

*  Rauchberg,  Dr.  Heinrich:    "Der  Nationale   Besitzstand  in 
Bohrnen,"  I,  page  229. 
t  Ibid.,  page  459. 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  77 

The  fact  is  that  Bohemia  sends  a  large  proportion  of  I  Cultural 
men  with  skilled  trades.     According  to  our  immigration  I  ^^  ™d^~_ 
figuresTor'igoS  their  proportion  for  all  immigrants  was'  ment  of  im- 
16  per  cent  of  those  with  occupations;    among  South  miSrants 
Italians  it  was  n  per  cent;  among  the  Irish  14  per  cent; 
among  Bohemians  it  was  25  per  cent.     The  most  numer 
ous  trades  were,  in  this  order,  tailors,  miners,  carpenters 
and  joiners,    shoemakers,    locksmiths,    butchers,    clerks 
and  accountants,  bakers  and  masons.     Except  among 
the  miners,  a  large  part  of  these  are  probably  country 
people,  many  of  whom  would  at  home  have  owned  their 
bit   of   land   and   combined   farming   with   their   trade. 
Many,   if  not  most,   would  however  have  had   careful 
training    as    apprentices,    as    well    as    good    ordinary 
schooling. 

The  small  trade  or  handicraft,  organized  under 
Austrian  law  as  a  more  or  less  modernized  guild,  is  a  very 
widespread  form  of  production  in  Bohemia.  One  of 
the  quaintest  sights  that  I  saw  there  was  the  funeral 
procession  of  a  butcher,  in  which  the  masters  of  the 
trade  in  costume  and  with  great  axes  as  symbols  of  the 
craft,  proudly  led  the  way,  followed  by  journeymen  and 
apprentices.  It  was  like  getting  back  into  the  Middle 
Ages.  With  all  that  is  mediaeval  in  this  system  it  sup 
plies  men  with  a  many-sided  skill,  an  industrial  intelli 
gence,  and  a  fitness  for  individual  work  which  our  spec 
ialized  machine-ridden  factories  do  not  produce,  but  which 
our  employers  have  often  been  very  glad  to  make  use  of. 

To  turn  again  to  the  immigration  statistics  of  1908,   Statistics  of 
it   is   interesting   to   note   that   the   proportion    of   the  occuPatlons 
laborers  is  among  the  Bohemian  immigrants  only  about 
one-sixth  what  it  is.  among  immigrants  in  general  (3  per 
cent  and  18  per  cent).     The  farming  class  is  also  rela 
tively  small   (n  per  cent  where  the  proportion  for  all 
immigrants  is  19  per  cent). 

On  the  other  hand  the  proportion  of  servant^^a.mong  \ 
Bohemian  immigrants  is  rather  high  (16  per  cent  as  \ 
compared  with  n  per  cent  of  all  immigrants).  This  is  '. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Literacy 


Local  and 

special 

causes 


Results  of 
American 

tariff 


connected  doubtless  with  the  large  proportion  of  women 
immigrants.  A  study  of  the  occupations  in  America, 
as  shown  by  the  census,  of  Bohemians  as  compared  with 
various  other  classes,  will  be  found  in  Chapter  XIV. 
It  is  notable  that  the  Bohemian  has  so  largely  main 
tained  in  the  new  world  his  more  highly  skilled  and  more 
individualized  work. .  He  may  work  on  his  farm,  in  a 
sweat  shop  at  tailoring  or  cigar  making,  in  his  own  work 
shop,  or  in  an  office.  He  is  not  to  be  found  apparently— 
in  the  massed  bodies  of  factory  labor  rior  in  the  mines. 

As  regards ' 'literacy"; "TTa'hcy  the  figures  may  be  aT 
surprise  to  many.  Taking  the  American  immigration 
figures  for  1900,  we  find  that  of  all  immigrants  of  fourteen 
years  and  over,  those  not  able  to  both  read  and  write 
were  24.2  per  cent;  among  the  Germans  5.8  per  cent; 
among  the  Bohemians  and  Moravians  only  3.0  per  cent; 
among  Scandinavians,  under  0.8  per  cent.  Certainly  to 
supply  only  about  one-half  as  many  illiterates  per  hun 
dred  as  the  Germans  is  a  notable  record.* 

All  of  this  is  quite  borne  out  by  the  impression  one 
gets  of  Bohemians  both  in  the  United  States  and  in 
Bohemia.  The  fact  is  that  in  development  and  condi 
tions  they  rank  with  the  immigrant  from  northwest 
Europe.  The  struggle  with  the  Germans  is  in  a  sense 
the  master-thread  in  their  whole  history,  and  this 
contact,  even  though  inimical,  has  meant  interpenetra- 
tion  and  rapprochement.  No  other  Slavic  nationality 
is  more  self-conscious  and  patriotic,  not  to  say  chau 
vinistic,  in  its  national  feeling,  and  at  the  same  time 
none  begins  to  be  so  permeated  with  general  European 
culture  and  so  advanced  economically. 

Besides  the  general  causes  of  Bohemian  emigration, 
already  mentioned,  special  causes  also  have  been 
present,  both  temporary  local  conditions  or  misfortunes, 
and  special  circumstances  of  individual  lives. 

An  interesting  example  of  emigration  due  to  specific 
disasters  is  that  caused  by  the  ruin  spread  by  the 

*  For  further  comparisons  see  Appendix  XXVII,  page  479. 


EMIGRATION  79 

McKinley  bill.  Take  for  instance  the  making  of  pearl 
buttons,  the  forced  transfer  of  which  to  the  United 
States  was  so  much  vaunted.  Not  only  was  the  in 
dustry  moved,  but  the  workers,  against  whom  there  is 
no  tariff,  had  to  come  too.  At  Neuhaus  in  Southern 
Bohemia  we  heard  of  a  whole  neighborhood  of  these 
people  that  had  emigrated;  and  among  those  still 
clinging  to  their  homes  we  found  men  earning  $2.40 
a  wreek  making  pearl  buttons,  who  before  the  Act  got 
S6.OO  or  even  $10. 

A  frequent  special  local  cause  of  emigration  is  a  strike.  Strikes 
The  Bohemian  colony  in  New  York  apparently  grew  out 
of  a  strike  in  the  Government  tobacco  factory  at  Kutten- 
berg  (Kutna  Hora)  in  the  seventies.*  In  Kladno,  a 
coal-mining  town  rather  out  of  the  usual  emigration 
district,  we  found  in  1905  that  emigration  on  a  large 
scale  had  recently  set  in  locally  as  a  result  of  an  unsuc 
cessful  strike  and  a  fall  of  wages. 

In  Pilsen  I  was  told  that  many  coal  mines  had  been 
given  up  or  were  being  worked  with  less  men,  and  that 
as  a  consequence  many  miners,  unused  to  agriculture 
and  wanting  better  wages,  had  gone  to  Germany  and  to 
America. 

As  to  purely  individual  causes,  they  are  naturally  Individual 
rrfost  varied.  One  man  emigrates  because  his  family  causes 
do  not  approve  of  his  chosen  bride;  another,  because  he 
loves  change;  another  because  his  accounts  are  short 
or  because  his  family  think  that  he  may  do  better  in 
new  surroundings.  Occasionally  I  found  the  feeling 
that  to  go  to  America  was  a  fact  that  needed  explana 
tion,  one  that  rather  implied  failure  of  some  sort  at  home. 
Occasionally,  too,  I  heard  it  said  that  those  who  emi 
grated  believed  that  they  were  going  to  an  easy  life 
in  a  land  of  gold.  It  happened  that  I  heard  both  these 
ideas  expressed  in  a  place  where  a  considerable  emigra 
tion  had  only  recently  set  in,  and  they  are,  I  think, 
commonly  confined  to  this  early  phase.  As  a  general 
*  See  below,  page  357. 


8o 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Steamship 
agents 


Emigration  j 
vs.  domestic; 
migration 


thing,  I  found  people  amazingly  w^fl  irtfnm|gd   as   to 

corjjditjpns  in  America^^and  deeply  convinced  that 
work  there  was  harder  than  at  home,  and  that  there 
was  nothing  but  hunger  for  the  man  who  did  not  work. 
On  the  whole,  too,  I  found  surprisingly  few  cases  of 
emigrating  ne'er-do-wells,  and  in  nearly  ten  months' 
investigation  I  could  hear  of  only  one  case  of  assisted 
emigration. 

As  to  the  steamship  agent  as  a  cause  of  emigration, 
his  importance,  as  I  have  already  said,  is  in  the  early 
days  of  an  emigration  movement.  The  old  tailor 
already  mentioned  told  how  in  the  first  days  of  the  move 
ment  agents  came  from  Bremen  and  traveled  about  and 
urged  and  promised.  This  sort  of  thing  is  not  done 
now-a-days,  and  what  solicitation  there  is  seems  to  be 
sporadic  and  occasional.  An  instance,  however,  came 
under  our  notice  in  a  peasant  house  not  many  miles 
away  from  Domazlice,  where  we  found  a  poster  of  a 
well-known  Bremen  firm  urging  emigration  to  the 
southern  states,  and  especially  to  Texas,  with  letters 
from  settlers  there,  and  the  pleasant  assurance  that  the 
examination  for  entrance  to  the  country  was  less  strict 
in  Galveston  than  in  New  York. 

But  the  importance  of  these  particular  exciting 
causes  tends  to  be  greatly  exaggerated.  The  occasional 
person  who  goes  away  under  a  cloud,  or  lured  by  prom 
ises  or  baseless  hopes,  is  a  drop  in  the  bucket  compared 
to  the  great  number  who  go  for  the  legitimate  reason 
that  they  see  a  better  opportunity  in  America,  and  who 
are  acting  on  the  advice  of  relatives  and  friends  who 
are  conversant  with  the  situation  on  both  sides. 

It  should  not  be  overlooked  in  -studying  Bohemian 
(or  any  other)  emigration,  that  emigration  to  America  is 
directly  related  to  available  opportunities  nearer  home. 
As  a  general  thing,  a  smaller  gain  in  a  neighboring  dis 
trict  or  country  will  be  preferred  to  the  risks  and  ex 
penses  of  going  over  seas,  though  this  tendency  may  be 
modified  by  all  sorts  of  cross  currents  of  habits,  hopes 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  8l 

and  affinities  which  may  make  America  seem  more 
desirable  or  easier  to  move  to  than  nearer  places.  Thus 
many  Bohemians  leave  their  homes  to  go  to  Germany 
or  to  other  parts  of  Austria,  notably  to  Vienna,  and 
especially  to  the  industrial  centres  of  Bohemia  itself. 

For  instance,  the  district  about  Neuhaus,  which  form 
erly  sent  emigrants  to  America,  is  now  within  the  sphere 
of  influence  of  the  Austrian  capital,  and  overflows  in 
that  direction.  In  Vienna  wages  are  much  higher  * 
but  so  is  cost  of  living,  and  there  is  said  to  be  small 
margin  for  saving,  so  that  little  or  nothing  is  brought 
home.  The  migration  to  nearby  places  is  naturally 
often  seasonal  or  temporary.  The  house  may  be  simply 
shut  up  and  left  for  the  time  being,  with  the  windows 
shuttered  or  boarded  up.  Those  who  go  to  New  York 
sell  their  property. 

Emigration  is  thus  a  product  of  two  variables — con 
ditions  at  home  and  conditions  abroad.  The  falling  off 
of  Bohemian  emigration  in  the  nineties  was  due  not 
only  to  business  depression  in  America,  but  to  a  high 
tide  in  the  iron  and  coal  industries  of  Germany  and 
Austria. 

In  regard  to  the  effect  of  emigration  on  the  old  coun-   Few  Bohe- 
try,   the   fact   that   Bohemian   emigration   is   generally  ^^1™ 

a  permanent  withdrawal  of  entire  families  means  that  return 

„."'/,.-,  l  .j******"***"" 

the  reaction  of  America  on  Bohemia  is,  as  already  said,  \ 

comparatively  slight.     There  are  neither  large  numbers  , 
of  returned  "  Americans  "  with  a  leaven  of  new  ideas  and 
habits,  nor  any  very  considerable  influx  of  remittances. 
Doubtless  many  old  persons  are  supported  by  children 
in    America,    but    generally  the    children    make    every 
effort  to  reunite  the  broken  family,  either  by  bringing  \ 
over    the    parents    or    by    returning    to    them.     Some   • 
doubtless  retire  on  a  competence  to  the  old  country. 
One  interesting  case  that  I  ran  across  was  a  teacher 

*  Daily  wage:   masons,  Neuhaus,  48  cents;   Vienna,  80  cents; 
common  laborers,  Neuhaus,  24  cents;   Vienna,  40  cents.     These 
wages  are  those  stated  by  a  local  informant  as  current  in  1905. 
6 


82  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

who,  finding  himself  declassed  at  home  by  a  besetting 
temptation  to  drink,  emigrated  to  America  and  worked 
in  the  Carnegie  steel  works,  keeping  his  social  class  and 
education  hidden.  The  facts  became  known,  however, 
and  he  was  given  work  as  a  bookkeeper.  He  is  now 
living  in  Bohemia  on  a  small  Carnegie  pension. 

Such  money  as  is  either  remitted  to  friends  in  Bohe 
mia  or  carried  home  by  returned  emigrants,  is  not 
enough  to  have  any  perceptible  effect  on  the  general 
economy,  and  Bohemia  receives  no  flow  of  money  avail 
able  as  capital,  such  as  has  produced  very  interesting 
results,  as  we  shall  see,  in  Croatia,  Galicia  and  the 
Slovak  districts  of  Hungary. 
Emigration  So  far  as  American  emigration  has  any  cultural 
effects'  &  probably  goes  to  enhance  the  tendency  of  the 
civilization  of  our  times  to  wipe  out  all  distinctive 
traits.  The  nineteenth  century  brought  indeed  a 
great  renascence  of  Bohemian,  or  Chekh,  the  national 
language,  which  is  one  of  the  richest  and  most  highly 
developed  of  the  Slav  linguistic  family,  and  the  organ 
of  a  noble  literature;  but  most  of  the  old-world  ways, 
that  is,  the  specifically  Bohemian  ways,  which  once  gave 
the  country  a  more  special  flavor,  are  gone  or  going 
fast. 

The  wane  of  The  towns  afford  indeed  picturesque  and  charming 
Bohemia  U6  kits '  PernaPs  a  cluster  of  steep  red  roofs  on  a  slope  or  in 
a  dip  of  the  hills  beside  a  pond  or  a  stream,  and  over  all  a 
church  with  the  odd,  bulbous  belfry  so  characteristic  of 
these  parts;  or  a  castle,  or  a  bastion  remaining  from  the 
former  town  walls.  But,  except  in  parts  of  Moravia  and 
in  the  historic  district  around  Domazlice,  the  original 
peasant  dress  is  mainly  obsolete.  Yet  even  in  the  Bud- 
weis  market,  how  pretty  were  scarlet  stockings  and  low 
slippers  under  the  short  petticoats;  and  everywhere 
among  the  women  working  in  the  fields,  what  flashes  of 
the  clear  bright  reds  which  all  Slavs  seem  naturally  to 
seek  and  instinctively  to  know  how  to  use  with  rare 
effect. 


BOHEMIAN    EMIGRATION  83 

The  legends  and  superstitions,  too,  the  ballads  and 
pretty  poetical  customs,  are  becoming  more  and  more 
matter  for  the  student  of  folklore,  if  not  for  the  anti 
quarian. 

And  in  this  connection  let  me  recommend  that  A  Bohe- 
charming  little  classic,  "The  Grandmother,"  into  which  mian  id-y11 
the  author,  Bozena  Nemec,  one  of  the  best-beloved  of 
Bohemian  writers,  weaves  reminiscences  of  her  child 
hood  (she  was  born  in  1820),  giving  us  a  succession 
of  pictures — the  pilgrimage,  the  wedding,  the  ordinary 
events  of  farm  life — which  are  not  only  a  mine  for  the 
student  of  comparative  custom,  but  the  best  possible 
introduction  to  Bohemian  spirit  and  ways.  Over  and 
over  again  in  our  little  travels  my  companion  and  I 
pointed  out  to  one  another  this  or  that — "Don't  you 
remember,  Grandmother  always  did  that,  too,"  or 
"Grandmother  explained  this  so." 

That  not  all  the  old  lore  perishes  even  in  America,  Traditions 
at  least  in  the  first  generation,  I  had  a  chance  to  ob-  inAmerica 
serve  in  a  stay  of  some  months  in  the  family  of  a  Bohe 
mian  workingman  in  New  York.  I  never  could  hear 
often  enough  an  old  song,  sung  properly  at  Twelfth 
Night,  when  the  boys  go  about  the  village  masquerad 
ing  as  the  Three  Kings,  one,  of  course,  as  a  blacka 
moor.  Then  there  were  ballads  and  nursery  rhymes  in 
plenty,  some  of  which  are  given  in  Appendix  VI.  I 
was  especially  struck  with  the  way  in  which  the  latter 
paralleled  ours  while  yet  they  were  quite  distinct. 
There  were  variants  of  "Knock  at  the  door,  peep  in" 
and  of  "  Pat-a-cake " ;  there  was  a  combination  of 
"Creep  mouse"  and  of  "This-little  pig  went  to  market," 
and  an  amusing  string  of  verses  that  suggested  "This 
is  the  house  that  Jack  built,"  besides  others,  quite 
fresh,  often  with  charming  melodies. 

Speaking    from    the    practical    point    of    view,    the  Community 
fact   that    Bohemia    is   less    picturesque   than    it    once  of  culture 
was  means  that  the  chasm  between  them  and  America 
is  less  wide. 


84  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

In  the  household  that  I  speak  of,  after  the  first  strange 
ness  on  both  sides  had  worn  off,  and  the  barriers  of  the 
intense  shyness  and  reserve  of  Bohemians  had  given  way, 
I  had  peculiarly  little  sense  of  being  an  alien  in  the  family, 
and  this  was  due  to  our  fundamentally  similar  outlook 
on"  life,  to  our  having  a  culture,  education,  religion 
fundamentally  similar  in  spite  of  differences  of  race, 
class  and  sect. 


CHAPTER  VI 
SLOVAK  EMIGRATION 

One    of    the    most    attractive    of   the    Slavic   nation-  The  Home 
alities  is  the  little  group  of  the  Slovaks  of  Hjingajry^ 
though  they  have  no  independent  history,  little  fame, 
and  are  the  very  step-children  of  fortune. 

They  live  for  the  most  part  in  the  district  which  they 
themselves  call  Slovensko,  along  the  southern  slopes  of 
the  Carpathians,  which  make  the  bounclary  of  Hungary  to 
the  north.  It  is  a  lovely  but  infertile  hill  country  with 
clear,  quick  streams  and  a  now  diminishing  wealth  of 
woods.  The  Slovak  peasants  own  mainly  the  poorest 
parts  of  the  soil 'of  this  ppor  region.* 

Below  them  to  the  south  is  the  rich  alfold  or  plain 
which  makes  up  central  Hungary,  and  is  the  home  of  the 
Magyars,  or  Hungarians  proper,  a  brilliant,  masterful 
race.  Here  in  the  plain  are  the  famous  pusztas  with 
wide-sweeping  wheat  fields  and  immense  herds  of 
horses  or  of  cream-colored,  wide-horned  cattle.  This 
endless  expanse  shimmers  in  the  hot  sun,  the  level 
lines  cut  only  by  a  stiff  well-sweep  here  and  there, 
while  on  the  horizon  the  fairy  Delibab  (the  mirage) 
shows  illusive  groves  and  pools.  Here  the  Slovaks 
sometimes  betake  themselves  to  get  work,  but  their 
homes,  with  the  exception  of  some  scattered  colonies, 
are  in  the  hill  country  to  the  north. 

*  A  charming  illustrated  description  of  the  Slovak  district 
which  deserves  translation  is  Kalal's  "Na  Krasnem  Sloveiisku." 
But  the  most  delightful  presentation  of  this  picturesque  and 
winning  people  is  the  portfolio  of  reproductions  in  color  of  Joza 
Uprka's  paintings  of  his  countrymen,  the  Slovaks  of  Moravia. 
Mr.  Seton- Watson's  book,  "  Racial  Problems  in  Hungary,"  also 
has  excellent  illustrations,  some  of  them  in  color,  and  con 
tains  besides  an  essay  on  "Slovak  Popular  Art,"  by  Jurkovic 
Dusan. 

85 


86  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

Numbers  The  total  number  of  Slovaks  is  probably  2,500,000  to 

3,000,000.  In  Hungary  proper  they  have  (even  ac 
cording  to  the  Hungarian  census,  which  the  non-Magyar 
nationalities  claim  underestimates  their  strength)  nearly 
2,000,000  souls,  or  nearly  12  per  cent  of  the  population. 
Of  this  2,000,000  much  the  greater  part  is  massed  in 
fifteen  northern  counties  of  Hungary,  the  hill  country 
already  mentioned,  and  in  a  small  adjacent  district  in 
Moravia,  across  the  border  to  the  west,  where  dwell 
perhaps  some  75,000.  Smaller  numbers  are  scattered 
through  other  parts  of  Hungary,  and  in  Croatia-Slavonia 
are  17,000  more.  There  are  probably  about  500,000  in 
the  United  States.* 

The  Slovak         Both   in    language    and,    presumably,    in    blood,    the  - 
tongue  Slovaks   are   very   close   to   the   Chekhs,   so   close  that 

Protestant  Slovaks  use  the  old  Bohemian  translation 
of  the  Bible,  made  in  1613  by  the  followers  of  Huss. 
Indeed,  till  after  1850,  when  the  first  Slovak  grammar 
was  written,  authors  of  Slovak  birth,  including  the  poet 
Kollar  and  the  scholar  Safafik,  wrote  in  Bohemian,  re 
garding  that  as  the  literary,  form  of  their  own  tongue. 
Nowadays  newspapers,  poetry,  novels  and  other  works 
are  published  in  Slovak,  but  a  person  who  knows  Bohe 
mian  can  read  them  probably  more  readily  than  an 
Englishman  reads  Burns. 

The  Slovaks  claim  that  their  vernacular,  as  compared 
with  the  Chekh,  is  purer  from  contamination  with 
foreign  idioms,  racier,  richer  in  old  words  that  are 
obsolete  or  unknown  in  Bohemia,  and  above  all  more 
musical  and  euphonious.  Admittedly,  the  Slovaks  are 
singularly  rich  in  folk-songs — like  most  primitive  songs, 
frequently  in  a  minor  key — and  in  beautiful  popular 
melodies,  f  The  county  of  Trencsen  is  especially  noted 

*  For  Slovak  population  of  Hungary  see  Appendices  I  and 
VII,  (pages  429  and  445).  For  numbers  in  the  United  States, 
see  page  266. 

f  See  Lichard  and  Kolisek  "Slovak  Popular  Melodies"  and 
Vajansky  "Slovak  Popular  Poetry" — two  delightful  essays  in 
Mr.  Seton- Watson's  "Racial  Problems  in  Hungary." 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  87 

for  the  custom  of  its  peasants  of  singing  in  parts. 
As  I  recall  hearing  this  music  ringing  from  the  roadside 
as  the  workers  walked  together  to  their  fields,  I  seem  to 
see  again  how  splendidly  the  women  carried  themselves, 
how  freely  and  finely  they  moved  in  their  short  petti 
coats. 

As  has  been  said,  the  Slovaks  have  no  independent  Slovak 
history,  though  the  part  of  the  country  which  makes 
their  home  has  been  the  scene  of  many  wars  and  romantic 
episodes,  and  the  Slovaks  have  made  sturdy  fighters 
on  many  a  bitter  field.  The  capital  of  the  ninth  century 
kingdom  of  Great  Moravia  was  the  Slovak  town  of  Nyitra. 
The  Slovaks  have  endured  successively  Polish  rule, 
Magyar  "ruTeT^TaTar  invasions,  peaceful  incursions  of 
German  settlers,  Hussite  raids,  and  dynastic  wars  of 
Hungary.  The  most  striking  episode,  however,  is  the 
semi-independence  in  the  fourteenth  century  of  Matthew 
of  Trencsen,  "Lord  of  the  Waag  and  the  Tatra,"  who 
with  some  thirty  fortified  castles  defied  king  and  pope.* 

All  this  has  left  its  impress  both  on  the  face  of  the  Ruins  and 
country  and  in  folklore.  On  almost  every  crag  in  leSends 
some  districts  stands  a  ruined  castle,  all  that  the  most 
romantic  could  desire  in  site  and  story.  Sometimes  the 
legend  seems  to  be  purely  mythical,  as  at  Beczko, 
where  a  faithless  lord  is  supposed  to  have  been  stung 
in  the  ear  by  an  adder  and  to  have  jumped  in  a  frenzy 
over  the  cliff;  sometimes  it  is  a  mixture  of  reality  and 
fable,  as  at  Trencsen,  where  a  well,  hewn  nearly  six 
hundred  feet  into  the  solid  rock,  is  explained  by  a  story 
which  tells  how  the  captive  daughter  of  a  Turkish  pasha 
was  held  for  ransom,  the  ransom  to  be  a  water  supply  for 
the  castle  which  stands  high  on  the  rocks  above  the  lovely 
river  Waag,  and  how  this  water  supply  was  furnished 
by  the  Turkish  prisoners  who  earned  their  liberty  and 
their  lady's  by  hewing  down  to  water  level.  Sometimes 
the  legend  is  actually  historical,  like  the  terrible  one  of 

*Cf.   Capek:    "The  Slovaks  of    Hungary,"   page   103;    also 
Seton-Watson:    "Racial  Problems  in  Hungary,"  page  23. 


88  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

Csejte,  where  the  Countess  Bathory  is  said  to  have  had 
three  hundred  young  girls  murdered  in  order  to  restore 
her  beauty  by  bathing  in  their  blood.  After  a  terrible 
cause  celebre,  in  which  her  guilt  was  proved,  an  old 
woman,  her  accomplice,  was  executed,  while  she  was 
thrown  into  prison,  where  she  died  in  1610.  An  idea  of 
the  way  in  which  war  raged  all  through  this  now  smiling 
country,  and  how  it  centered  about  the  siege  of  these 
castles,  may  be  gained  from  Jokai's  novel  translated 
into  German  as  "Geliebt  bis  zum  Schaffot." 

Not-only  in  legends  but  in  song  the  memory  of  "old 
unhappy  far  off  things  and  battles  long  ago"  survives. 
Especially  are  the  ballads  full  of  reminiscences  of  the 
sufferings  from  the  Turks. 

Village  life  But  of  more  interest  than  romantic  ruins  and  tradi 
tions  is  the  living  variety  of  the  people  today.  The 
villages,  while  sometimes  dreary,  are  often  full  of  life 
and  charm.  As  a  quiet  pond  is  a  common  feature  of  a 
South  Bohemian  village,  characteristic  of  a  Slovak 
village  is  a  brook  running  through  its  midst.  It  is 
peopled  by  geese,  now  plump  and  sleek,  now  newly 
plucked  and  dismal,  by  playing  children  and  by  women 
knee-deep  in  the  cold  water  pounding  their  linen  on 
little  wooden  stands.  Willows  and  a  foot  bridge,  and  a 
wagoner  watering  his  horse  before  he  drives  through  the 
shallow  ford,  perhaps  complete  the  picture. 

If  it  is  a  town  and  not  a  village,  there  may  be  a 
church,  occasionally  of  some  architectural  pretensions, 
and  perhaps  a  good  deal  else  of  historical  interest, 
such  as  the  remains  of  the  old  wall  that  kept  out  the 
Turks  in  their  day,  with  a  stone  cannon  ball  embedded 
in  its  side ;  the  former  gallows  hill ;  and  an  old  linden 
which  now  shades  the  image  of  a  Christian  saint  but 
under  which  a  heathen  god  may  once  have  been  wor 
shipped  (for  the  linden  is  the  sacred  tree  of  the  Slavs) . 

Gipsies  Just  outside  some  of  the  towns  will  be  seen -a  gipsy 

settlement,  all  dirt,  naked  children  and  beggary.  One 
man  is  squatting  over  a  fire  forging  a  chain,  for  the 


SLOVAK  SCENES 

1.  In  Rosenberg,  in  Lipto  county,  home  of  Father  Hlinka.  2.  Shingle  roofs  with  orna 
mented  gable  ends.  Zolyom  county.  3.  "American"  houses  in  Lipto  county,  built  by  re 
turned  emigrants.  4.  Carrying  home  hemp.  Thatch  roofed  houses  in  Zemplen  county.  5. 
A  Zolyom  mother  who  wanted  to  send  a  picture  to  her  husband  in  America. 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  89 

gipsies  are  clever  iron  workers.  In  a  grass-roofed  hovel, 
where  the  air  is  dense  with  smoke,  a  violin  hangs  on  the 
wall.  The  boy  who  owns  it  may  some  day  be  earning 
gold  and  glory  as  a  member  of  one  of  the  gipsy  bands 
which  afford  the  Magyar  such  extravagant  delight,  but  a 
gipsy  he  will  remain  in  every  fibre. 

The  return  from  such  a  settlement  to  the  Slovak  Slovak 
town  or  village  is  a  return  to  another  world.  Here  are  ' 
long,  low  houses,  neat  and  clean,  ranged  with  their 
gable  roofs  end  to  end  in  an  even  row,  flush  with  the 
street,  the  eaves  just  above  the  door.  The  roofs  are 
apt  to  be  of  hand-made  shingles,  for  thatch  means 
plenty  of  grain  to  supply  the  straw,  and  not  much 
grain  grows  here.  The  houses  are  generally  either  of 
brick,  frequently  merely  sun  dried,  or  of  wood. 
Ofterf^Tlie :  'ends  of  cross-laid  logs  or  great  squared 
beams  show  clearly  at  the  corners.  But  whatever  the 
material,  it  is  generally  covered  with  plaster  or  raw  clay, 
and  either  whitewashed  or  painted  some  pale  shade  of 
buff,  blue  or  green.  The  houses  are  generally  perfectly 
plain  in  their  design,  though  some  have  pretty  woodwork 
at  the  gable  ends,  or  patterns  painted  on  the  walls  or 
about  the  windows — a  kind  of  work  which  is  a  specialty 
of  the  women,  who  are  said  to  do  it  freehand.* 

Of  course,  conditions  vary  with  localities  and  with  Interiors 
individual  housewives,  but  my  general  impression  is  of 
inte^r^^idy^jidJio^fteWie^^iowever  deep  the  mud  in 
the  village  street.  Even  an  earthen  floor  may  be  made 
to  suggest  cleanliness.  I  remember  especially  a  call 
at  a  house  where  the  daughter  had  recently  gone  to 
America  to  get  work.  The  mother  who  welcomed 
us  led  us  through  the  entry,  where  a  girl  was  wash 
ing,  into  the  living  room  and  offered  us  the  tradi 
tional  "bread  and  salt" — that  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
a  loaf  of  rye  bread  and  a  knife  that  we  might  serve 

*  For  specimens  of  Slovak  architecture  and  wall  decoration, 
including  a  wall  painting  reproduced  in  color,  see  Seton- Watson, 
pages  88,  204,  320,  352,  354,  356,  358  362 


92  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

Girls  and  married  women  are  generally  distinguished, 
the  former  as  a  rule  by  their  long  braids,  the  latter  by 
their  caps,  which  are  usually  hidden,  however,  under 
the  universal  kerchief.  Otherwise  the  dress  is  the  same 
from  childhood  to  old  age;  if  the  skirts  of  the  district 
are  full  and  short,  they  are  short  for  the  grandmother, 
and  if  long,  they  are  long  even  for  the  toddler  of  three 
or  four. 

In  many  places  the  women  wear  very  short  skirts  and 
leather  boots  to  the  knees,  like  a  man's.  At  first  these 
boots  strike  a  stranger  as  clumsy  and  unfeminine,  but 
an  experience  of  what  mud  can  be  here  soon  converts 
one  to  their  good  sense,  and  as  to  grace  they  give  a  new 
impression  when  one  has  an  opportunity  to  see  the 
quick,  graceful  dancing  of  the  girls,  the  high  heels  of 
their  trim-ankled  boots  clicking  the  measure.  In 
Transylvania  one  sees  these  tall  boots  made  of  soft 
scarlet  morocco  leather  with  patterns  in  gilt  nail-heads 
on  the  heels.  Sometimes,  instead  of  boots,  low  moccasin- 
like  shoes  called  Krpce  are  worn,  bound  with  leather 
thongs  about  the  ankle.  These,  too,  are  worn  by 
either  sex. 

One  of  the  prettiest  forms  of  dress  is  a  low  square- 
cut  bodice,  over  a  chemise  of  white  linen  with  full  short 
sleeves,  with  a  wide  rufHe  above  the  elbow  and  a  broad 
band  of  embroidery — perhaps  in  orange  and  canary- 
yellow  silks — across  the  sleeve  just  below  the  shoulder.* 
Men's  dress  The  men,  especially  the  young  fellows,  are  often 
great  dandies.  Sometimes  they  wear  jackets  and 
trousers  of  cadet-blue  cloth,  fitted  like  a  glove  and 
braided  with  black  in  looping  designs.  Sometimes  they 
are  dressed  in  white  linen,  with  wide  fringed  trousers 
and  a  narrow,  dark-blue  apron.  It  is  astonishing  how 
both  men  and  women  dig  and  delve  in  white  linen  and 
still  look  clean. 

Especially  archaic  are  the  wide-brimmed  black  felt 

*  Embroidery  in  this  style  is  pictured  in  color  in  Seton- Watson, 
opposite  page  368. 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  93 

hats,  looking  almost  like  the  old-fashioned  cocked  hat, 
worn  by  the  men  in  some  districts,  and  the  enormous 
leather  belts.  Sometimes  these  appear  to  be  a  good 
foot  and  a  half  wide;  they  are  studded  with  brass 
trimmings  and  serve  as  pouches  for  all  the  necessaries, 
especially  tobacco. 

A  very  important  article  of  dress  for  both  men  and 
women  is  the  sheepskin  garment,  made  with  the  wool 
inside  and  the  leather  out,  or  sometimes  reversible 
according  to  weather.  It  may  be  quite  plain  or  much 
adorned, — dyed,  embroidered,  trimmed  with  applique 
leather  or  with  brass  work,  or  with  borders  of  wool  of 
a  contrasting  color.  These  garments  take  many  forms ; 
in  some  places  they  appear  as  close-fitting,  sleeveless 
jackets,  very  pretty  and  very  comfortable;  in  other 
places,  as  long-sleeved  coats.  Sometimes  this  coat  is 
made  not  of  sheepskin,  but  of  the  heavy  home-made 
felt  called  hunia.  This  may  be  dark  brown  or  blue, 
but  is  oftener  white  and  is  also  used  instead  of  leather 
for  tall  boots,  which  can  be  kept  white  and  clean  by 
washing. 

It  interested  me  very  much  to  note  how  certain 
characteristic  articles  of  dress — such  as  the  moccasin- 
like  shoe,  the  leather  coat,  the  belt,  the  kerchief  or  shawl 
— appear  here  and  there  among  all  the  different  Slav 
nationalities  that  I  have  had  an  opportunity  to  observe, 
running  through  a  whole  gamut  of  modifications. 
Nowhere  could  the  student  of  the  natural  history  of 
costume  find  richer  fields. 

The  Slovaks  seemed  to  me  comely  and  sweet-faced,.  Facial  char- 
rather  than"~beautiful,  though  there  are  of  course  excep-  !^nstlcs 
tions.     Among   the    elders    one    sees    the    best    sort    of  physique 
beauty  in  the  strongly  marked  lines  of  character  and 
experience;    here  "the  old,  plain  men  have  rosy  faces 
and  the  young  fair  maidens  quiet  eyes."     One   seems 
to  distinguish  two    markedly  contrasting   facial  types. 
There   is   the   round,   full   face   with   short   nose,    high 
cheek  bones  and  widely  separated  grey-blue  ej 


94 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  darker 
side 


Intemper 
ance 


other  places  this  is  replaced  by  a  strongly  marked  facial 
contour,  with  straight,  long,  sharpset  nose  and  long 
lantern  jaw.'  ^ 

Physically  they  are  often  splendid  creatures,  power 
ful  without  being  heavy,  and  full  of  the  grace  that  goes 
with  health  and  varied  activity  and  the  bearing  of 
burdens.  Nothing  seems  too  heavy  for  the  women  to 
carry.  A  child  of  two  or  three  will  be  slung  com 
fortably  on  the  back  in  a  linen  cloth,  and  apparently 
regarded  as  scarcely  an  addition  to  other  burdens. 
The  women  marry  young,  bear  a  child  a  year— "always 
either  bearing  or  nursing,"  is  the  saying, — and  perhaps 
in  consequence  grow  old  fast. 

Both  men  and  women  seem  insensible  to  heat  and 
cold.  In  summer  they  will  dance  gaily  under  "art 
almost  unbearable  sun  in  their  sheepskin  or  wool  coats, 
which  represent  full  dress;  in  winter  the  men,  I  am  told, 
labor  in  the  woods  in  their  shirts  without  any  sort  of 
vest  or  jacket.  They  are_ver^Jiar4- workers.  In  the 
season  when  field  operations  are  pressing  there  are 
often  weeks  when  a  man  sleeps  only  four  or  five  hours', 
and  snatches  his  food  as  he  can.  I  was  told  of  a  peas 
ant  who  was  hired  to  thresh  for  a  man  whose  crop  was 
not  so  large  but  that  he  might  have  done  his  own 
work.  The  comment  of  the  thresher  was,  "  Er  muss  doch 
ein  Schwein  sein  der  nur  acht  Stun  den  arbeiten  will." 

All  these  good  qualities  are  handicapped  by  various 
unfortunate  circumstances  acting  on  the  weaker  sides 
of  the  Slovaks,  on  their  passiveness  and  lack  of  initiative 
and  their  proneness  to  drink.  Apart  from  the  natural 
infertility  of  the  soil,  intensified  as  this  is  by  condi 
tions  of  landholding  and  tillage,  th$  great  curses  of 
the  country  seem  to  be  three:  political  conditions, 
intemperance  and  financial  exploitation  (the  last  two 
very  closely  related).  To  the  first  of  these,  political  con 
ditions,  I  will  recur  later. 

As  to  intemperance,  all  the  powers  that  be  seem  to 
favor  rather  than  to  restrain  drinking.  The  large 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  95 

landowner,  who  is  the  local  great  personage,  is  interested 
in  marketing  the  products  of  his  distillery.  The  Jew 
who  pays  for  the  exclusive  right  of  sale  and  keeps  the 
drinking  shop  where  the  rank  potato  brandy  of  the 
countryside  is  sold,  is  often  the  only  intelligent  man  in 
the  little  community,  the  only  one  who  can  help  in  a 
money  difficulty,  translate  a  legal  document  (always  in 
Magyar),  or  assist  with  advice  in  an  emergency.  He 
often  controls  not  only  the  drink  traffic  but  practically 
all  the  retail  trade,  and  is  the  only  man  who  can  supply 
goods  or  buy  produce.  For  all  these  reasons  it  is  essen 
tial  to  stand  well  with  him,  and  his  goodwill  must  be 
won  by  buying  his  wares,  especially  his  liquor. 

The  government  also,  I  am  told,  is  opposed  to  tem 
perance  agitation  as  likely  to  lower  revenues,  and  some 
years  ago  actually  put  a  stop  to  a  series  of  mission  ser 
vices  that  the  Redemptorist  fathers  were  proposing  to 
hold  throughout  the  Slovak  counties  in  the  interest  of 
temperance.  The  local  priest  is  not  likely  to  be  a 
total  abstainer,  and  too  often  has  neither  the  desire 
nor  the  courage  to  take  a  decided  stand  on  the  question, 
though  there  are  honorable  exceptions.  Public  opinion, 
while  not  so  low  as  in  eighteenth  century  England,  or 
colonial  New  England,  is  much  below  what  it  is  at 
present  in  the  more  advanced  countries.  One  of  the 
most  frequent  comments  of  returned  emigrants,  in  re 
gard  to  the  United  States,  is  in  the  first  place  that  beer 
is  cheap  and  abundant  in  America,  and  in  the  second 
place  that  men  are  arrested  there  for  being  drunk. 
"And  rich  men  as  well  as  poor  ones;  that  could  not 
happen  here." 

As   to    financial    exploitation,    the    local    reputation.. .Indebted- 
of  the  Jews   seems  to  vary  with   the  "credit   situation.  T 
Where     credit      institutions     have     been     established, 
lending  money  at  5  £  or  6  per  cent  instead  of  at  the 
Jewish  rate  of  8  or  12  per  cent  or  more,  the  Jews  are 
often   respected   and   not   disliked;    but   in   too   many 
places,    where    the    simple,    drink-loving    peasants    are 


94 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  darker 
side 


Intemper 
ance 


other  places  this  is  replaced  by  a  strongly  marked  facial 
contour,  with  straight,  long,  sharpset  nose  and  long 
lantern  jaw. 

Physically  they  are  often  splendid  creatures,  power 
ful  without  being  heavy,  and  full  of  the  grace  that  goes 
with  health  and  varied  activity  and  the  bearing  of 
burdens.  Nothing  seems  too  heavy  for  the  women  to 
carry.  A  child  of  two  or  three  will  be  slung  com 
fortably  on  the  back  in  a  linen  cloth,  and  apparently 
regarded  as  scarcely  an  addition  to  other  burdens. 
Tine  women  marry  young,  bear  a  child  a  year — "always 
either  bearing  or  nursing,"  is  the  saying, — and  perhaps 
in  consequence  grow  old  fast. 

Both  men  and  women  seem  insensible  to  heat  and 
cold.  In  summer  they  will  dance  gaily  underlain 
almost  unbearable  sun  in  their  sheepskin  or  wool  coats, 
which  represent  full  dress;  in  winter  the  men,  I  am  told, 
labor  in  the  woods  in  their  shirts  without  any  sort  of 
vest  or  jacket.  They  arjj^vej^Jiaj^-'Workers.  In  the 
season  when  field  operations  are  pressing  there  are 
often  weeks  when  a  man  sleeps  only  four  or  five  hours', 
and  snatches  his  food  as  he  can.  I  was  told  of  a  peas 
ant  who  was  hired  to  thresh  for  a  man  whose  crop  was 
not  so  large  but  that  he  might  have  done  his  own 
work.  The  comment  of  the  thresher  was,  "  Er  muss  doch 
ein  Schwein  sein  der  nur  acht  Stun  den  arbeiten  will." 

All  these  good  qualities  are  handicapped  by  various 
unfortunate  circumstances  acting  on  the  weaker  sides 
of  the  Slovaks,  on  their  passiveness  and  lack  of  initiative 
and  their  proneness  to  drink.  Apart  from  the  natural 
infertility  of  the  soil,  intensified  as  this  is  by  condi 
tions  of  landholding  and  tillage,  the  great  curses  of 
the  country  seem  to  be  three:  political  conditions, 
intemperance  and  financial  exploitation  (the  last  two 
very  closely  related) .  To  the  first  of  these,  political  con 
ditions,  I  will  recur  later. 

As  to  intemperance,  all  the  powers  that  be  seem  to 
favor  rather  than  to  restrain  drinking.  The  large 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  95 

landowner,  who  is  the  local  great  personage,  is  interested 
in  marketing  the  products  of  his  distillery.  The  Jew 
who  pays  for  the  exclusive  right  of  sale  and  keeps  the 
drinking  shop  where  the  rank  potato  brandy  of  the 
countryside  is  sold,  is  often  the  only  intelligent  man  in 
the  little  community,  the  only  one  who  can  help  in  a 
money  difficulty,  translate  a  legal  document  (always  in 
Magyar),  or  assist  with  advice  in  an  emergency.  He 
often  controls  not  only  the  drink  traffic  but  practically 
all  the  retail  trade,  and  is  the  only  man  who  can  supply 
goods  or  buy  produce.  For  all  these  reasons  it  is  essen 
tial  to  stand  well  with  him,  and  his  goodwill  must  be 
won  by  buying  his  wares,  especially  his  liquor. 

The  government  also,  I  am  told,  is  opposed  to  tem 
perance  agitation  as  likely  to  lower  revenues,  and  some 
years  ago  actually  put  a  stop  to  a  series  of  mission  ser 
vices  that  the  Redemptorist  fathers  were  proposing  to 
hold  throughout  the  Slovak  counties  in  the  interest  of 
temperance.  The  local  priest  is  not  likely  to  be  a 
total  abstainer,  and  too  often  has  neither  the  desire 
nor  the  courage  to  take  a  decided  stand  on  the  question, 
though  there  are  honorable  exceptions.  Public  opinion, 
while  not  so  low  as  in  eighteenth  century  England,  or 
colonial  New  England,  is  much  below  what  it  is  at 
present  in  the  more  advanced  countries.  One  of  the 
most  frequent  comments  of  returned  emigrants,  in  re 
gard  to  the  United  States,  is  in  the  first  place  that  beer 
is  cheap  and  abundant  in  America,  and  in  the  second 
place  that  men  are  arrested  there  for  being  drunk. 
"And  rich  men  as  well  as  poor  ones;  that  could  not 
happen  here." 

As   to    financial    exploitation,    the    local    reputation..  Indebted - 
of  the  Jews   seems  to  vary  with   the  credit   situation.   r 
Where     credit     institutions     have     been     established, 
lending  money  at  5^  or  6  per  cent  instead  of  at  the 
Jewish  rate  of  8  or  12  per  cent  or  more,  the  Jews  are 
often   respected   and   not    disliked;     but   in   too   many 
places,    where    the    simple,    drink-loving    peasants    are 


96 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Illiteracy 


wholly  at  their  mercy,  the  Jews  are  accused  of  getting 
them  into  debt,  often  through  tavern  bills.  There  is 
especial  complaint  of  the  way  they  contrive  to  get  con 
trol  of  the  woods,  which  are  the  only  valuable  asset  of 
the  region,  and  which  are  being  recklessly  cut  down  by 
speculators.  On  these  steep  chalky  hillsides  this  means 
destruction  of  the  soil,  floods  and  general  disaster. 
Where  there  has  been  a  movement  to  America,  the 
peasants,  educated  by  experience,  are  said  to  know 
how  to  keep  out  of  the  hands  of  designing  individuals.* 

Among  our  Slavic  immigrants  the  Slovaks —Tank 
second  in  education — next,  but  far  below,  the  Bohemians. 
Our  immigration  figures  for  1900  for  those  fourteen 
years  of  age  and  over  show  that  of  Bohemians,  3  per 
cent  are  illiterate;  Slovaks,  28  per  cent.  It  is  worth 
noticing,  as  bearing  out  my  view  that  we  get  the 
pick  of  the  Slovak  population,  that  this  is  decidedly 
better  than  the  proportion  at  home.  The  Slovak 
counties  range  from  Gomor,  with  28  per  cent  of  the  popu 
lation  illiterate,  to  Ung,  with  over  67  per  cent.  Twelve 
of  the  Slovak  counties  are  worse  than  the  general 
Hungarian  average  (50.6  per  cent)  of  illiteracy,  four  are 
better. f 

One  of  the  promising  things  I  noted  is  a  thriving 
co-operative  movement,  in  which  the  priests  seem  to 
lead.  The  co-operative  store,  served  by  the  members, 
the  co-operative  dairy  and  sometimes  the  co-operative 
hall  for  dancing,  co-operative  banks,  J  amateur  theatri 
cals  and  entertainments,  all  these  things  furnish  the 
best  possible  sort  of  training  in  business  and  in  organ 
ization,  apart  from  more  direct  benefits. 

Agriculture    \     For  livelihood  the  main   dependence  is  agriculture. 
This,  in  spite  of  the  presence  of  some  other  kinds-of 

*  Terrible  stories  of  Jewish  treachery  and  exploitation  are 
told  in  detail  in  a  series  of  articles  by  Karl  Kalal  in  the  Prague 
monthly  Osveta,  1900,  Nos.  3,  4  and  5. 

t  For  further  immigration  data  on  illiteracy  see  Appendix 
XXVII,  page  479- 

J  Data  as  to  thirty-two  Slovak  banks,  with  a  total  capital  of 
over  5,000,000  crowns,  will  be  found  in  Seton- Watson,  page  469. 


Co-oper 
ation 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  97 

work,    is    the    main    occupation — agriculture,    that    is, 
including  stock  raising,  but  all  on  a  very  small  scale. 

As  in  Russia,  the  mechanics  and  factory  hands  and 
the  wandering  peddlers-- and  workers  are  in  most  cases 
simply  peasants  temporarily  employer!  otherwise  than 
in  their  fields.  The  thickly  settled  village,  which  to 
American  eyes  suggests  town  life,  is  surrounded  by 
land  belonging  to  the  houses  and  employing  men  and 
women  alike.  Population  is  not  dense  absolutely,  but 
take  into  consideration  the  character  of  the  soil,  the 
amount  of  land  held  in  large  estates  (and  this  is  apt  to  be 
the  best  situated),  the  amount  that  is  in  woodland  or 
otherwise  unfit  for  tillage,  the  degree  of  subdivision  of 
property,  the  primitive  methods  and  the  frequent  in 
debtedness,  and  it  is  not  hard  to  understand  why,  as 
Hurban  Vayansky's  pathetic  song  of  the  wandering 
Slovak  says,  "Our  native  village  does  not  give  bread  to 
her  children." 

As  a  general  thing,  agriculture  alone  is  not  a  suf 
ficient  source  of  income  and  must  be  eked  out  in. other - 
ways.  Some  of  the  men  have  trades,  are  black 
smiths,  shoemakers,  tanners,  dyers,  and  so  forth;  some 
are  woodsmen  and  raftsmen,  leading  a  hard  and  danger 
ous  life,  at  work  in  ice-cold  water  or  piloting  their 
floats  past  rocks  and  rapids.  Some  are  shepherds, 
spending  the  summer  at  a  mountain  pasture  preparing 
the  famous  Lipt6  cheese,  which  is  exported  even  to 
New  York. 

Some,  especially  in  certain  poor  districts  which  Wandering 
have  long  been  unable  to  support  their  population,  have  trades 
for  generations  been  accustomed  to  set  out  on  foot  either 
to  follow  a  wandering  trade  or  to  sell  certain  wares, 
sometimes  handmade,  sometimes  bought  abroad.  Most 
characteristic  of  these  wanderers  was  the  Drotar,  or  as 
the  Germans  say,  Drahtbinder,  who  made  all  sorts  of 
things  of  wire,  sometimes  very  elaborate  and  artistic 
things,  but  whose  commonest  task  was  the  mending  of 
broken  earthen  pots  with  a  skilful  wire  network.  If 
7 


98  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

the  pot  rang  like  a  bell  when  done  the  work  was  good. 
As  metal  pots  replaced  earthenware  the  demand  for  this 
service  grew  less,  and  the  selling  of  all  sorts  of  wire  and 
tin  goods  and  the  like  partly  took  its  place.  Unfor 
tunately,  in  some  instances  small  boys  are  pressed  into 
the  business,  and  one  meets  them  in  Prague  and  else 
where — wretched  little  half-beggars  working  for  what 
an  Italian  would  call  a  padrone,  with  the  usual  story 
of  a  beating  if  they  do  not  bring  home  a  set  sum. 

In  America  the  wire  workers  often  find  employment 
for  their  skill  in  modernized  forms  of  the  same  craft — 
making  fences,  gates  and  railings,  mouse-traps,  and  small 
articles,  and  becoming  tinplaters  and  plumbers.*  Mr. 
Rovnianek  reports  "In  several  of  the  large  cities, 
especially  in  Philadelphia,  New  York  and  Chicago,  wire 
and  tinware  factories  which  have  been  established  with 
Slovak  capital  and  are  conducted  with  Slovak  labor,  are 
in  a  fair  way  to  secure  the  cream  of  the  trade  of  this 
kind  in  the  whole  country.  A  peculiar  advantage  is 
derived  from  the  fact  that  for  centuries  the  tinware  of 
Europe  was  made  largely  by  the  Slovaks.  In  this 
country  also  electrical  designs  and  other  skilled  work 
turned  out  by  Slovak  plants  have  obtained  a  very  high 
position  in  the  markets."  f  This  is  interesting  as 
a  case  where  it  has  been  practicable  to  utilize  an  old 
form  of  skill  in  the  new  country. 

Specializa-    '      Another  famous  specialty  was  glass  setting,  and  the 
wandering  Slovak  glazier  was  eagerly  watched  for  when 

trades  a  window  pane  or  the  glass  of  a  holy  picture  needed 

replacing.  Others  again  dealt  in  spices,  in  oils,  in 
fruit;  others  in  dry  goods,  especially  in  linen.  In 
some  cases  this  peddling  was  built  up  into  large,  settled 
wholesale  businesses,  and  well-known  firms  in  Russia, 
Bucharest,  Warsaw,  and  elsewhere  have  been  developed 
in  this  way.  Generally  these  different  types  were 
quite  specifically  located;  the  wire  men  came  from 


*  Wandering  Trades  in  the  Bibliography, 
t  Charities,  XIII,  page  242  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


o  o 

u  > 

Q  EH. 

O 


z    x 

:  > 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  99 

Trencsen,    the    spice    dealers   from    Lipto    county,    the 
linen  merchants  from  Tur6cz. 

Modern    conditions    have    greatly    militated    against  Other  em- 
these  old  Slovak  methods  of  eking  out  an  existence,  awa/yfcom 
Russia,  Germany  and  France,  which  with  the  near  East  home 
were  among  the  chief  markets,  have  passed  laws  or  laid 
taxes  which   shut  out  the  Drotars  and  the  rest,   and 
cheap  factory  products  have  underbid  them. 

More  modern  forms  of  temporary  employment  take 
men  to  neighboring  districts  for  harvest  and  other 
agricultural  work,  or  to  the  cities  for  building  or  factory 
labor.  In  the  years  when  Budapest  was  making  its 
most  rapid  growth  many  masons,  carpenters  and  others 
went,  as  they  put  it,  "to  build  Pest,"  and  the  slackening 
of  this  work  is  said  to  have  been  one  cause  of  increased 
emigration  to  America.  Factories  about  Budapest  and 
Pressburg  now  give  employment  to  considerable  num 
bers,  but  unfortunately,  in  the  Slovak  counties  them 
selves,  in  spite  of  minerals,  water  power  and  cheap 
labor,  industry  is  very  little  developed.  Where  it  does 
exist  it  tends  to  keep  men  at  home  since  it  supplies  the 
ready  money  which  is  so  needed  and  of  which  agricul 
ture  yields  so  little. 

Obviously  such  a  situation  as  has  been  described  means  Slovak  emi- 
that  many  will  emigrate  if  the  way  only  opens.     Their  Q^n^nd 
own  land  has  never  fully  supported  them,  and  if  America  spread 
offers  opportunities  better  not  only  than  the  wandering 
trades,  which  modern  conditions  are  killing   out  in  any 
case,  but  better  than  the  possible  earnings  as  hired  hands 
in  neighboring  districts  and  countries,  then  to  America 
men  will  go  if  they  can.* 

The  movement  seems  to  have  begun  in  the  north 
eastern  part  of  the  Slovak  district  in  Zemplen,  Saros, 
Szepes  (German  Zips)  and  Ung.  This  district  is  racially 
very  mixed,  containing  large  numbers  of  Jews,  Germans 
and  Ruthenians,  besides  Slovaks.  The  Jews  have  come 
in  largely  from  Galicia  (Austrian  Poland)  just  across 
*  See  Appendix  VIII,  page  447,  for  studies  of  Slovak  emigration. 


102 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Since  1899  the  American  data  for  immigrants  by 
country  of  origin  have  merged  emigrants  from  Hungary 
in  the  whole  group  from  Austria-Hungary  except  in 
the  year  1905.  The  following  tables  show  the  Hun 
garian  totals  for  emigration,  1896-1906,  and  both  the 
American  and  Hungarian  tables  for  1905 : 

TABLE  6.— TOTAL  EMIGRATION  FROM  HUN.GARY,  AS 
REPORTED  BY  LOCAL  AUTHORITIES  IN 

HUNGARY,  1896-1906. 
YEAR  No  OF  EMIGRANTS 

1896 .   24,846 

1897 .'.   14, 310 

1898 22,965 

1899 43-394 

1900 54,767 

1901 71,474 

1902 91,762 

I9°3 H9,944 

I9°4 97.340 

1905 17°, 43° 

1906 178,170 


Total. 


1,402 


TABLE  7.— EMIGRATION  AND  RE-IMMIGRATION,  1905.* 


HUNGARIAl* 

i  FIGURES 

AMERICAN 
FIGURES 

NATIONALITY 

LEFT  HUNGARY 

RETURNED 

IMMIGRANTS  EN 
TERING  U.  S. 
FROM  HUNGARY 

Magyars     

4-2  7C4 

4.  C7  c. 

4.1;,  300 

Germans.  ...             .... 

28  "?o  3 

2.4C  7 

2C,7  CO 

Slovaks 

•28  770 

4  O^8 

S  I.OOQ 

Roumanians 

17  747 

2  so6 

7,167 

Ruthenians 

7  287 

I,OI2 

*  268 

Croatians 

17   S  2  3 

i  88^ 

22  ooyt 

Servians 

i  o  376 

o^o 

2,  ^4-Ot 

Others 

2    I  O  I 

167 

6,8ca 

Men 

122  O  SO 

14  489 

Women 

4.  T,   8O2 

-2  077 

Total 

165  861 

1  7  ^66 

l6^    7O3 

*  The  figures  are  not  strictly  comparable,  as  the  American 
figures  refer  to  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30,  1905. 
f  Croatians  and  Slovenians, 
j  Servians,  Bulgarians  and  Montenegrins. 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION 


I03 


The   American   figures   for   Slovak  immigrants   since 
1899,  when  they  were  first  printed,  are  as  follows: 

TABLE    8.— SLOVAK    IMMIGRANT    ALIENS    ADMITTED 
TO  THE  UNITED  STATES 


YEAR 
ENDING  JUNE  30 

NUMBER 

YEAR 

NUMBER 

1800 

I  *  838 

I  QO  ^ 

Z2    368 

I  OOO 

2Q   243 

1  006     .  .                         ... 

38,221 

IOO  I 

2O,  T.A.  T. 

IQO7 

42  ,041 

I  QO2 

•?6  o  34 

IOO8.  . 

16,170 

I  OO  3 

34,427 

IQOQ.  . 

22,586 

I  QO4 

27,040 

Total 345-111 


The  loss  of  population  by  emigration  for  the  two 
decades  preceding  1900  as  shown  by  the  census  is  given 
for  the  chief  Slovak  counties  in  Table  9.*  This  table 
also  shows  the  percentage  of  Slovaks  in  the  counties 
where  they  are  most  numerous. 

Map  VII,  drawn  from  the  same  source,  shows  the 
relative  intensity  of  emigration  in  all  parts  of  Hungary 
as  represented  by  the  percentage  of  the  population  of 
1900  reported  by  the  local  authority  as  having  emigrated 
in  1899-1901.  It  will  be  seen  how  great  is  the  relative 
intensity  of  emigration  in  the  Slovak  counties.  Szepes, 
Saros,  Abauj-Torna,  Zemplen  and  Ung,  and  these 
counties  alone,  show  a  loss  of  5  per  cent  or  over  of  the 
population  in  three  short  years.  In  Arva  and  Gomor  the 
loss  is  2  to  3  per  cent.  In  Tur6cz,  Lipt6  and  Bereg  the 
loss  is  i  to  2  per  cent.  Even  these  last  figures  cannot 
be  paralleled  elsewhere  in  Hungary  proper.  Only  in 
Croatia  do  we  find  in  Modrus-Fiume  county  a  loss  of 
2  to  3  per  cent  and  in  Agram  (Hungarian  Zagrab)  county 
a  loss  of  i  to  2  per  cent. 

*  Taken  from  Thirring,  Gustav:  "Die  Auswanderung  aus 
Ungarn."  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  Hongroise  de  Geographic, 
vol.  XXX  (1902),  page  8;  except  the  figures  for  Slovak  per 
centage  of  population,  for  which  see  Niederle,  "  Narodopisna 
Mapa,"  page  121.  For  further  data  see  Appendices  V  and  VII, 
pages  433  and  445- 


104 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


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io6 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Character 
of   the   emi 
gration        f 


Successive 
phases 


Emigration 
of  unmar-  ' 
ried  girls 


The  character  of  the  Slovak  emigration  has  been 
throughout  quite  different  from  the  Bohemian.  Instead 
of  emigrating  to  settle,  taking  his  family  and  property 
with  him,  the  Slovak  merely  went  to  America,  instead 
of  to  some  nearer  field,  to  earn  needed  money.  The  wife 
rejnained,  as  before,  to  care  for  the  house,  bring  up  the 
children  and  work  the  land  till  he  should  return. 

Such  an  emigration  movement  often  runs  through 
quite  well-defined  phases.  First  the  man  goes  alone 
and  returns  with  his  earnings,  as  planned.  Then  he 
goes  again,  and  this  time  decides  to  settle  or  at  least  to 
remain  for  some  time,  and  returns  and  takes  out  his 
wife  and  children. 

At  a  later  stage,  when  the  routes  are  better  known  and 
parties  are  frequently  starting,  the  man  often  sends  for 
his  wife  to  come  and  join  him,  without  going  himself 
to  get  her.  She  is  not  always  eager  to  begin  life  again 
under  strange  conditions;  often  she  fears  to  face  the  long 
and  difficult  journey  alone  with  a  family  of  little  children. 
One  woman  we  met  just  starting  out,  waiting  at  the  home 
railroad  station  with  baby  and  bundles.  Her  husband, 
after  vainly  urging  her  to  come  to  him,  had  finally  cut 
off  supplies  and  sent  a  prepaid  ticket,  and  willy-nilly 
she  was  going.  Her  brother-in-law,  a  sturdy  young  man 
who  was  traveling  with  her,  was  eager  for  work  however 
hard,  and  I  judged  that  she  too,  now  that  the  wrench  was 
over,  was  ready  enough  to  go. 

A  still  later  phase  is  when  the  unmarried  girls  begtrrto- 
go  over  independently,  as  the  Irish  girls  have  done  for  so 
long.  And  the  Slovak  girls,  like  the  Irish,  go  mainly  to 
service.  America  is  to  them  even  more  of  an  Eldorado 
than  to  the  men.  Instead  of  three  or  four  dollars  a 
month  a  girl  has  American  wages  and  almost  no  expenses. 
If  she  secures  a  good  place  she  is  treated  with  more 
respect,  if  not  also  more  kindness,  than  she  is  used  to; 
if  she  is  a  good  maid  her  industry,  cleanliness,  honesty 
and  docility  are  appreciated,  and — glory  of  glories — 
she  wears  a  hat.  A  Slovak  lady  was  telling  us  (as  so 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  107 

many  had  done)  of  a  former  servant  who  had  gone  to 
America  and  recently  written  to  her  from  there.  "Tell 
me,  it  can't  be  true,  can  it?"  she  said.  " She  writes  that 
she  wears  a  hat.  Of  course  even  in  America  that  is 
impossible.  And  she  says  that  the  master  is  so  kind, 
he  bids  her  good  morning  before  she  has  spoken  to  him." 
And  we  tried  to  explain  that  in  America  neither  wearing 
a  hat  nor  greeting  last  is  a  hall-mark  of  the  socially 
superior. 

Sometimes  very  young  girls  go  alone;  that  is,  with 
a  party  of  comparative  strangers.  A  friend  told  us  of 
going  to  a  village  in  Nyitra  county  and  finding  a  little 
peasant  lass,  "  only  fourteen  and  pretty  as  a  picture," 
dressed,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  not  in  her  short, 
full  peasant  petticoats,  but  in  a  long,  citified  skirt. 
When  asked  why  she  was  so  dressed  up,  she  answered, 
"Tomorrow  I  am  going  to  America."  She  was  to  join 
relatives  there,  but  had  only  strangers  to  look  to  for 
protection  on  the  way.  I  must  admit  that  one  seldom 
hears  of  any  evil  chance  resulting  from  such  journeys, 
and  it  is  gratifying  to  note  how  confident  the  experienced 
emigrant  is  that  conductors  will  be  kind  in  looking  after 
the  helpless;  nevertheless,  it  is  probably  a  wise  provision 
of  our  immigration  law  of  1907  which  gives  the  authorities 
discretionary  power  to  refuse  admission  to  children 
under  sixteen  traveling  apart  from  their  families. 

One  of  the  most  important  questions  to  us,  as  regards  Favorable 
any  stream  of  emigrants,  is  what  selective  forces  are  at  influences 
work.  Are  we  getting  the  failures  who  cannot  succeed 
at  home — as  people  say,  "the  dregs,"  "the  scum"? 
Or  are  we  getting  the  best?  Among  the  Slovaks,  the 
main  selecting  traits  would  seem  to  be  energy,  strength 
and  trustworthiness.  The  ones  who  are  the  most  apt 
to  emigrate  are  those  who  are  ambitious  and  those 
whose  credit  is  good, — for  they  commonly  go  on  bor 
rowed  money.  They  are  therefore  those  who  are  physi 
cally  strong  and  who  expect  (and  are  expected)  to  be 
able  to  make  "big  money"  in  America  by  undertaking 


io8 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Politics 
and  emi 
gration 


what  is  known  to  be  the  very  hard  work  here.  I  was 
told  at  the  Tatra  Bank  in  Saint  Martin  that  in  all  the 
years  during  which  the  bank  had  been  loaning  money 
to  emigrants,  they  had  never  had  a  case  where  the  money 
loaned  (generally  about  400  crowns,  or  $80),  was  not 
repaid  in  four  months.  To  my  inquiry  as  to  what  hap 
pened  if  a  man  was  absolutely  unable  to  pay,  in  case  of 
sickness  or  accident,  for  example,  "Then  his  brother 
pays,"  I  was  told.  A  peasant  is  seldom  refused  a  loan 
on  account  of  lack  of  character,  though  he  may  be 
because  of  absolute  poverty.  Peasants  are  "good  pay," 
I  was  told,  gentlemen  uncertain,  and  stories  were  related 
to  illustrate  the  peasants'  fidelity  in  discharging  a  debt, 
even  a  questionable  one. 

Of  course,  there  are  cases  of  those  who  emigrate  be 
cause  they  have  ruined  themselves  at  home  by  intemper 
ance,  by  bad  management  or  through  ill-luck,  but  my 
conclusion  is  that,  on  the  whole^we  get_  tJ^jDick  of_the 
population  from  which  emigration  mainly  draws,  but 
it  does  not  draw  from  all  strata  as  we  have  seen.* 

While  the  main  causes  of  emigration  are  doubtless  here 
also,  as  among  the  Slavs  generally,  economic  not  polit 
ical,  the  political  conditions  yet  play  an  important 
part.  Aside  from  desire  to  avoid  military  service, 
and  individual  cases  of  persecution,!  it  is  prob 
ably  not  very  often  _Jthat  poli'tinal^  re.fl.snris^jr!fl.i:isg  a 
Slovak  peasant  to  leave  the  country,  but  on  the  other 
hand  these  are  often  a  chief  cause  for  His  finally  remaining 
permanently  in  America.  A  more  or  less  conscious  sense 
of  being  ill  at  ease,  of  being  regarded  as  an  inferior, 


*Cf.  Stodola:  "Prispevok  Ku  Statistike  Slovenska,"  page 
20,  note.  "If  we  today  observe  Slovak  villages  from  which 
people  stream  to  America,  we  see  that  those  who  remain  at 
home  are  not  the  most  healthy,  industrious,  fit  to  cope  with 
life,  nor  the  most  enterprising." 

t  Such  for  instance,  as  the  case  of  a  Slovak  Protestant  minis 
ter,  in  New  York  who,  as  I  was  informed,  was  forced  to  leave 
Hungary  because  he  refused  to  preach  in  Magyar  more  than  two 
Sundays  out  of  three  to  a  congregation  which  understood  only 
Slovak. 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  109 

and  on  account  of  his  race  thwarted  in  his  efforts  to 
progress,  makes  Hungary  unattractive  to  him.  The 
dark  cloud  resting  over  everything  in  Hungary  is  the 
political  tension, — not  the  struggle  of  Hungary  with 
Austria  for  advantage  in  their  strange  partnership,  but 
internal  tension  between  the  different  racial  elements 
in  the  kingdom.* 

While  one  must  feel  with  the  Slovaks,  who  are  the  The  Magyar 
injured  party,  one  cannot  help  also  sympathizing  with  state  ldea 
Magyar  statesmen  in  the  difficult  position  in  which  they 
find  themselves.  They  desire  to  strengthen  and  expand 
their  national  life  and  to  develop  the  peculiar  and  in 
teresting  genius  of  their  own  strain ;  and  they  find  them 
selves  an  isolated  body  of  some  eight  or  nine  million  or 
so,  hemmed  in  not  only  by  unfriendly  states  but  by  a 
majority  belonging  to  rival  nationalities  within  their 
own  boundaries.  Stung  by  unfriendly  prophecies  to 
the  effect  that  the  Magyar  stock  must  infallibly  be 
absorbed  and  perish  as  a  racial  entity,  they  determined 
at  whatever  cost  to  reverse  the  process  and  forcibly  to 
assimilate  all  non-Magyar  elements  within  their  borders. 
The  phrase  "The  Magyar  State  idea"  is  on  every  one's 
lips  for  praise  or  blame, — the  idea,  that  is,  that  in  the 
state  there  must  be  complete  unity,  or  rather  uniformity, 
including  uniformity  of  language.  Everything  must  be 
Magyar,  and  Magyar  alone.  To  bring  this  about  in  a 
country  where  the  Magyars  are  only  some  51.4  per  cent 
of  the  population,  and  where  through  whole  countrysides 
their  language  is  absolutely  unknown  to  the  mass  of  the 
population,  is  a  gigantic  and  cruel  task. 

Formerly  the  language  of  parliament  and  of  state  busi-  Forced  use 
ness  generally  was  Latin.     People  still  living  recall  this  ?f  MagYar 


language 


*  Having  seen  something  at  first  hand  of  the  shocking  op 
pression  of  the  Slovaks  by  the  Magyars,  I  am  thankful  to  Mr. 
Seton- Watson  who  in  his  "Racial  Problems  in  Hungary"  has 
given  a  full  account  of  the  too  little  known  conditions  prevailing 
in  a  country  for  which  the  general  public  feels  so  much  interest 
and  desires  to  feel  so  much  respect.  An  account  of  all  this  un 
happy  matter  will  also  be  found  in  Mr.  Capek's  book  "The 
Slovaks  in  Hungary." 


no 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Other  op 
pressive 
measures 
of  the 
Magyars 


Educational 
interference 


era.  Then  came  the  unhappy  decision  to  give  a  forced 
monopoly  in  pulpit,  school,  courts  of  justice,  and  so  far 
as  possible  in  daily  life,  to  the  Magyar  language.  This 
is  a  very  difficult  non-Aryan  tongue  of  the  agglutinative 
type,  akin  to  Finnic  or  perhaps  to  Turkish,  and  entirely 
unrelated  to  Slavic  languages.  The  Slovaks,  who 
like  most  &Iavs  are  extremely  tenacious,  object  to 
this  policy  on  practical  as  well  as  on  sentimental  grounds. 
Their  own  language  with  a  little  experience  practically 
opens  to  them  the  whole  Slav  world,  including  Russia 
(and  we  have  seen  what  wanderers  they  are).  German, 
too,  which  a  large  proportion  of  them  can  speak,  is  an 
important  medium  of  business  and  culture.  "But 
what,"  they  say,  "does  Magyar  open  to  our  children? 
They  come  out  of  school,  in  most  cases,  not  really  masters 
of  it  and  at  the  same  time  illiterate  in  their  own 
tongue,  which  they  have  not  been  allowed  to  learn  to 
read  or  write.  This  is  a  cause  of  an  artificial  degree  of 
illiteracy  among  our  people.  In  America  our  people  learn 
to  read  Slovak  and  come  back  reading  the  newspapers." 

But  in  Hungary  to  take  a  Slovak  newspaper  or,  if  an 
educated  man,  to  speak  the  Slovak  tongue,  is  to  brand 
oneself  in  Magyar  eyes  as  a  political  traitor  and  to  insure 
every  possible  obstacle  in  one's  path.  The  upper  schools 
("gymnasiums"),  formerly  conducted  in  Slovak  and 
founded  and  supported  by  private  contributions,  have 
been  closed  and  the  funds  sequestrated;  the  Slovak 
literary  association  has  been  dissolved  and  its  building 
seized.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  a  company  of  Slovak 
shareholders  to  receive  the  necessary  permission  to 
carry  on  business  even,  since  the  undertaking  is  con 
sidered  a  nationalistic  enterprise.* 

Though  the  State  has  pledged  itself  by  law  to  provide 
instruction  up  to  the  university  in  the  mother  tongue  of 

*  A  cellulose  factory  at  Saint  Martin  in  Tur6cz  is  a  well-known 
instance.  After  standing  idle  for  a  long  time  while  the  Slovak 
owners  vainly  endeavored  to  get  a  government  license  to  begin 
work,  it  was  sold  to  a  Jewish  company  for  less  than  it  was  worth, 
and  at  once  was  licensed  and  put  in  operation. 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  III 

each  of  the  nationalities,  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  govern 
ment  not  only  fails  to  do  this,  but  prevents  its  being 
done  at  private  expense,  often  confiscating  school  funds 
when  raised.  Even  to  study  for  the  priesthood  a  Slovak 
must  pass  through  the  Magyar  seminary,  and  there  any 
study  of  the  language  of  the  future  flock  is  treated  as 
ground  for  expulsion.* 

The  natural  consequence  is  that  a  Slovak  who  con 
tinues  his  education,  religious  or  secular,  beyond  the 
primary  school,  necessarily  receives  a  purely  Magyar 
training,  and  partly  through  assimilation,  partly  through 
prudential  considerations,  generally  becomes  a  "  Magyar- 
one,"  and  like  most  converts,  plus  royaliste  que  le  roi. 
Thus  the  Slovaks  lose  their  natural  leaders  by  a  con 
stant  drafting  off  of  the  ablest  and  most  ambitious, 
and  this  fosters  the  Magyar  feeling  that  T6t  (Magyar 
for  Slav),  is  synonymous  with  ignorance,  dullness  and 
poverty.  All  that  is  intelligent  is  assumed  to  be 
Magyar.  This  stupid  contempt  (for  all  contempt  is 
stupid),  and  the  desire  to  appropriate  as  Magyar  all  the 
specifically  Slovak  productions,  is  most  exasperating. 
In  the  beautiful  ethnological  museum  at  Budapest  all 
the  Slovak  treasures  of  embroidery,  costume,  etc.,  ap 
pear  to  be  Magyar.  No  other  nationality  is  recognized. 

Another  very  trying  phase  of  the  Magyarizing  process  Renaming 
is  the  renaming  of  places.  A  Slovak  village,  for  in-  °  P a 
stance,  will  be  given  a  new  Magyar  name,  a  forced 
translation  or  a  would-be  Magyarized  form  of  the  im 
memorial  word,  and  this  is  felt  not  unnaturally  as  a  great 
grievance.  When  I  have  asked  Slovaks  in  America  what 
place  they  came  from,  they  have  said  to  me,  plaintively, 
"I  don't  know  what  its  name  is  now;  it  used  to  be  so- 
and-so,  but  they  have  changed  it. ' '  How  is  a  Slovak  who 
does  not  know  Magyar  to  guess,  for  instance,  that 
Aranypataka  means  his  old  home  Zlat6?f 

The  Magyarizing  tendency  is  fostered  by  the  fact  that 

*For  a  case  in  point,  see  Appendix  X   page  448. 

fCf.  Seton- Watson  on  these  subjects,  pages  188,  189,400,478. 


112 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Evil  effects 
of  internal 
strife 


the  Magyar  language  has  only  one  word  for  the  two 
ideas,  Magyar  and  Hungarian.  Hungary  is  Magyar- 
orszdg  (that  is,  Magyar  land),  and  one  might  almost  say 
that  this  whole  wretched  business  reduces  itself  to  a 
poor  pun.  "A  Hungarian"  (that  is,  an  inhabitant  of 
Hungary)  "must  of  course  speak  Hungarian"  (that  is, 
Magyar),  and  if  not  willingly,  then  by  compulsion. 

All  this  bitterness  and   strife  afford  many  avenues  of 
advance  to 


Effects  of 
emigration 
on  the  home 
country ; 


41'"1  <[  lg*r"ntT  e™**'ft!«™>  ^  ^^ 

often  Jews  of  the  type  whose  only  concern  in  the  struggle 
of  nationalities  is  their  own  personal  advantage  become 
the  clever  instruments  for  a  great  deal  of  "dirty  work" 
of  all  sorts.  Double  honor  then  to  those  Jews  who, 
in  spite  of  the  bad  traditions  of  a  persecuted  race  and 
the  sinister  opportunities  afforded  by  a  helpless  peasan 
try,  are  honorable  and  just  in  their  dealings.  And 
double  honor  to  those  Magyars  who  unite  to  love  of  their 
own  race  the  magnanimity  to  appreciate  the  claims  of 
others,  and  the  wisdom  to  recognize  the  folly  of  a  policy 
which  alienates  and  keeps  back  millions  of  their  sturdiest 
citizens.  Similarly,  double  honor  to  those  Slovaks, 
who  in  spite  of  the  danger  of  personal  ruin  and  the  daily 
experience  of  petty  annoyances,  which  are  less  heroic 
but  perhaps  harder  to  endure,  sacrifice  all  their  prospects 
in  life  to  loyalty  to  their  own  people  and  to  their  country 
as  a  whole.  Meeting  such  men  is  one  of  the  greatest 
pleasures  of  traveling  among  the  Slovaks.  Honor,  too, 
to  the  quiet  and  simple  people  who,  except  where  polit 
ical  inflammation  has  set  in,  respect  and  like  all  their 
neighbors,  regardless  of  racial  differences.  Ijpu-generai  .. 
there_Js  no  antipathy  or  ill  feeling  among  Slovaks  and 
MagyarsT^TCirie^e^sam^"  of  'both  rate's  lire  generally  "pro~-^ 
fbundly  unconscious  of  any  reason  for  hating  one 
another,  regard  one  another  as  friends,  and  inter-marry 
freely. 

I  frequently  asked  in  Hungary,  "Is  this  emigration  to 
America  an  advantage  or  a  disadvantage  here?"  The 
answer  naturallv  varied  with  the  answerer. 


A  SLOVAK  TYPE 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  113 

Thej^mglpyer  suffers  as  lias  been  said  from  the  growing  Disadvan- 
scarcity  of  labor,  especially  of  farm  laborers  and  servants, 
and  from  the  consequent  rise  of  wages.     The  value  of 


pages 


land  is  affected,  sometimes  rising  through  the  cTemand  of 
returned  "Americans,"  sometimes  falling  where  emigra 
tion  has  been  epidemic  and  has  partly  depopulated  a 
district.  The  Magyar  dreads  the  independent  spirit 
and  aroused  national  feeling  of  those  that  come  back. 
The  thoughtful  Slovak  passionately-regrets. the  draining 
away  of  the  lustiest  and  most  energetic  of  the  popula 
tion';'  on  the  side  of  the  fatherland  he  sees  a  great  physical 
and  moral  loss,  and  on  the  side  of  emigrants  a  pitiful  if 
inevitable  exile.  He  speaks  also  with  bitter  regret  of 
the  too  numerous  cases  of  demoralization  of  the  stay-at- 
homes.  It  is  very  common  for  a  man  to  marry  and  install 
his  young  wife,  and  in  a  very  short  time,  often  in  a  few 
weeks,  go  to  America.  He  is  loyal  and  sends  her  money. 
For  her,  with  her  unwonted  liberty  and  unwonted  money, 
temptation  sets  in.  Too  often  he  returns  to  find  in  the 
home  children  that  are  not  his,  or  to  lead  an  unhappy 
life  with  a  wroman  who  seems  to  him  stupid  and  dull 
after  his  foreign  experiences. 

One  hears,  too,  the  frequent  complaint  that  the  home 
country  bears  the  cost  of  the  rearing  of  the  emigrants 
through  the  years  when  all  is  outgo,  only  to  see  them,  as 
soon  as  they  are  in  their  prime,  go  to  strengthen  an  in 
dustrial  competitor ;  that  emigration  means  the  necessity 
of  supporting  an  undue  proportion  of  the  womenfolk, 
of  the  aged,  the  weakly,  and  the  left  behind,  of  those  that 
America  refuses  to  accept  and  of  the  unusables  generally ; 
and  finally,  that  those  who  have  been  to  America 
return,  too  frequently,  either  injured  by  accidents  in 
mines  and  foundries  and  on  railroads,  or  worn  out  with 
excessive  work  at  a  pace  to  which  they  are  not  ac 
customed  and  which  their  diet  does  not  fit  them  to 
endure. 

However,  in  considering  the  balance  of  advantage  to  Gains 
the  home  country  three  things  must  be  counted  to  the 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


good  :  the  providing  in  some  cases  for  an  excess  of  popu 
lation  over  what  the  oaun^ry^airpropeTly"  support;  the 


Remit 
tances 


America 
receives 
full  return 


granTsTwith  more  awakened  personality. 

As  to  the  amount  -of  'money  received,  complete  figures 
are  not  to  be  had.  An  official  investigation  resulted  in 
an  estimate  of  $17,000,000  sent  to  Hungary  by  emigrants 
through  banks  alone  in  1903.  This  money  was  sent 
mainly  from  the  United  States  and  doubtless  largely  by 
Slovaks.  It  does  not  include  what  returning  emigrants 
brought  with  them  in  cash,  nor  what  was  sent  by  postal 
orders.  The  postal  districts  of  Kassa  in  the  eastern  part 
of  the  Slovak  district,  and  Pozsony  in  the  west  reported 
that  over  $4,000,000  was  sent  into  the  Slovak  district 
from  America  in  1899,  a  time  when  the  numbers  in 
America  were  much  less  than  they  are  now.  One  banker 
told  me  that  a  Slovak  ordinarily  sends  home  $120  a  year. 
Another  informant  writes  me  of  a  place  in  Zemplen  county 
with  1156  men,  which  had  received  $140,000.  He  adds: 
"This  gives  the  best  idea  of  the  enormous  importance 
of  emigration  where  the  average  annual  income  is  hardly 
over  $100  or  $120.  And  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
the  public  hold  emigration  to  be  beneficial.  I  have  met 
three  men  who  inaugurated  emigration  to  America  in 
their  villages;  all  were  regarded  as  benefactors  of  their 
country,  and  they  were  not  a  little  proud  of  their  daring." 

As  to  this  flow  of  money,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  thought 
less  talk  from  the  side  of  American  interests,  as  though 
it  represented  a  loss  to  America  without  an  equivalent. 
Granted  that  it  would  be  better  to  have  the  money  spent 
in  this  country,  we  may  trust  the  acumen  and  self- 
interest  of  American  employers  sufficiently  to  be  certain 
that  every  dollar  of  it  represents  at  least  a  dollar's 
worth  of  labor  contributed  to  American  production  and 
permanently  embodied  in  our  national  wealth. 

As  to  the  use  made  of  this  money  in  the  old  country, 
doubtless  some  of  -  it  is  spent  foolishly  and  some  of  it 
worse  than  wasted  in  drink,  both  by  returned  emigrants 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  115 

and  by  those  to  whom  remittances  come  from  America; 
but  the  bulk  of  it  appears  to  go  to  pay  off  debts,  while 
much  is  invested  in  farm  tools,  much  is  used  to  buy  land, 
some  goes  to  pay  for  a  higher  standard  of  living,  and 
some  is  spent  for  public  purposes,  religious  and  political, 
such  as  for  rebuilding  or  decorating  a  church,  for  metal 
crosses  in  a  graveyard,  or  for  patriotic  funds.  My  im 
pression  is  that  among  a  population  where  so  little  money 
is  in  circulation,  this  "American  money"  is  on  the  whole 
a  very  great  blessing. 

On  the  whole,  the  effect  on   the  returned   emigrant  Why  Amer- 
seems  to  be  less  than  an  American  would,  at  first  thought,   ^L^the*10* 
expect,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  not  only  is  the  emigrant 
man  by   every   instinct   and  by   all   his    training   con 
servative,  but  that  many  American  ways  are  incapable 
of  being  transplanted  to  conditions  so  different.     Con 
sider  for  a  moment  a  great  American  factory  or  a  New 
York  tenement  house;    what  hints  can  they  give  as  to 
production  or  as  to  house  building  to  a  Slovak  who  has 
gone  back  to  his  native  village? 

With  regard  to  farming,  not  only  are  American 
methods  often  inapplicable,  but  they  are  seen  by  few 
Slovak  emigrants, — one  might  almost  say  by  no  emigrants 
who  return.  The  man  who  takes  to  farming  in  America 
is  generally  proposing  to  stay  there. 

In  considering  the  amount  of  effect  that  America 
exerts  on  those  who  return,  we  must  furthermore  note 
that  the  emigrant  in  any  ™*p  jg  apt  t.n  sag J^g  r*t 
can  ways  tEai'i  WB'diu  crOfEe^to  tBke_£Q£-^^tec' 
Slovak  comes"  overwrcn  a  group  01  nis  fellows,  goes  to  a 
Slovak  boarding  house,  a  Slovak  church,  a  Slovak  store, 
a  Slovak  saloon,  and  a  Slovak  bank;  knows  his  "boss," 
himself  very  likely  a  foreigner,  only  by  his  orders  and 
oaths,  and  deals  with  Americans  only  as  the  street  car 
conductor  shouts  to  him,  "What  do  you  want,  John?" 
or  the  boys  stone  his  children  and  call  them  "  Hunkies." 

In  spite  of  this,  America  does  exert  an  influence.     A   American 
priest  in  a  Slovak  village  will  show  you  with  interest  the  mfluence 


Il6  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

superior  "American"  houses  in  his  parish,  built  in  the 
local  fashion  but  more  substantial  and  better  kept, 
and  with  American  novelties,  such  as  glass  tumblers,  a 
nickel  clock  and  other  little  luxuries. 

Political  In  America  the  Slovak  is  likely  to  be  quickly  drawn 

Effects  jnto  a  mutual  benefit  organization  of  his  own  nationality, 

and  here  he  probably  gets  an  education  in  nationalistic 
feeling.  How  far  this  is  really  panslav  (that  is,  Russo- 
phile),  as  the  Magyars  complain,  I  do  not  know.  At 
any  rate,  the  Magyars  always  find  panslavism  a  good  cry 
with  which  to  attack  any  Slavic  activity, 
^iy  impression  is  that  the  Slovak  often  does  return 
from  America  with  awakened  national  selt-cbnscious- 


that  he  is  generalTy'^qurre  unconcerned  about 
o!istant  political  Utopias  of  any  sort,  and  confines  his 
interest  to  practical  local  issues,  such  as  education  in 
their  mother  tongue  for  his  children,  and  elections  to 
parliament  where  the  Slovaks,  witho^er  a  tenth  of  the 
population,  had  in  1905  one  representative  out  of  450'. 

At  any  rate,  I  can  readily  conceive  why  his  Magyar 
superiors  feel  that  "America  has  spoiled  the  Slovak 
emigrant."  He  has  more  money  and  he  is  more,ajaa* 
bitious.  ,,.^.He  has  often  learned  to  readTif  lie  did  not 
know  how  before,  tie  takes  a  newspaper  and  has 
political  interests  and  opinions. 

Scton-Watson  speaks  several  times  of  the  influence 
of  the  Slovaks  in  America,  and  of  those  returned  from 
there  : 

"The  returned  Slovak  emigrants  who  have  saved 
money  in  the  United  States  are  steadily  acquiring  small 
holdings  in  Hungary,  and  helping  to  propagate  ideas  of 
freedom  and  nationality  among  their  neighbors.  The 
growth  of  Slovak  banks  since  1900  has  been  specially 
remarkable,  and  though  still  trifling  compared  with  the 
large  Jewish  and  Magyar  institutions  of  North  Hungary, 
they  are  none  the  less  able  to  hold  their  own  and  extend 
their  business.  ... 

"During    the    past    generation    many    thousands    of 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  1 17 

Slovak  peasants  have  emigrated  to  the  United  States, 
carrying  with  them  feelings  of  bitterness  and  resentment 
towards  the  authorities  of  their  native  land.  They 
speedily  learn  to  profit  by  the  free  institutions  of  their 
adopted  country,  and  today  the  400,000  Slovaks  of 
America  possess  a  national  culture  and  organization 
which  present  a  striking  contrast  to  the  cramped  de 
velopment  of  their  kinsmen  in  Hungary.  There  are  more 
Slovak  newspapers  in  America  than  in  Hungary;  but 
the  Magyars  seek  to  redress  the  balance  by  refusing  to 
deliver  these  American  journals  through  the  Hungarian 
post  office.  Everywhere  among  the  emigrants  leaj 
societies  and  clubs  flourish  undisturbed — notably  the 
American  Slovak  League  (NaYodnie  Slovensky  Spolok), 
the  Catholic  Jednota  (Unity)  and  the  women's  league, 
Zivena.  These  societies  do  all  in  their  power  to  awaken 
Slovak  sentiment,^^nd  contribute  materially  to  the 
support  of  thefSfovak  press  in  Hungary.  The  self- 
confidence  and  manly  independence  of  the  returned 
emigrants  contrast  with  the  pessimism  and  passivity  of 
the  older  generation,  and  they  are  doing  much  to  leaven 
the  Slovak  population  with  new  ideas  of  liberty  and 
justice.  The  alarm  with  which  the  government  views 
this  movement  was  revealed  by  its  summary  action 
against  Francis  Pollakovic",  a  young  American  citizen, 
in  the  autumn  of  1907."* 

To  quote  Seton-Watson  further: 

"Just  as  the  Irish  party  was  financed  from  America/  Aid  to  na- 
so  the  Roumanians  of  Hungary  receive  aid  from  their  ^ tlonalist 
kinsmen  in  America,  the  Serbs  from  Belgrad,  the  Slovaks* 
from  Bohemia  and  the  United  States.     The   Magyars, 
instead  of  treating  this  as  natural  and  inevitable,   in 
dulge  in  wild  charges  of  treason  and  bribery.     The  chief 
reason,  however,  that  the  grapes  are  sour  is  that  the 

*  Seton-Watson,  "Racial  Problems  in  Hungary,"  pages 
202-3.  A  fairly  full  account  of  the  case  of  Pollakovic  who,  though 
an  American  citizen,  was  made  to  serve  a  term  of  imprison 
ment  for  "incitement  against  the  Magyar  nationality"  in  1907, 
is  given  by  Seton-Watson,  page  321  and  Appendix  xxiv. 


Il8  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

Magyars  have  no  kinsmen  of  their  own,  outside  Hungary, 
from  whom  they  could  under  any  circumstances  receive 
support,  whether  financial  or  military."* 

"It  is  interesting  to  learn  that  English  is  occasionally 
employed  by  returned  Slovak  emigrants  when  they  do 
trot  wish  to  be  understood  by  the  local  officials." 
(Page  283). 

When  I  have  asked  what  returned  emigrants  report 
about  America  I  have  been  told  that  they  say  (in  the 
German  phrase  in  which  it  was  given  to  me),  "Hier  ist 
ein  Mann  ein  Hund;  da  ist  er  ein  Herr."  (Here  a  man 
is  a  dog;  in  America  he  is  a  gentleman.) 
The  re-  Under  the  circumstances  it  is  not  strange  that  the 

returned  emigrant  chafes.  It  is  hard  to  exert  oneself 
for  twenty  or  even  forty  cents  a  day,  after  the  compara 
tively  large  wages  earned  in  Pittsburgh  steel  works  or 
Scranton  coal  mines.  It  is  hard  to  be  sufficiently  sub 
missive  to  the  pettiest  Magyar  or  Jewish  official  after  an 
experience  of  American  independence.  Naturally,  'a 
man  who  feels  thus  is  looked  on  with  disfavor;  his 
sense  of  the  superiority  of  American  ways  does  not  make 
him  more  popular,  and  the  visit  to  America  which  was 
intended  to  be  temporary  leads  finally  to  settlement 
here. 

Mr.  Koukol  says,  "I  spoke  of  the  powerful  call  their 
native  bit  of  earth  makes  upon  so  many  of  the  immi 
grants.  But  frequently,  when  men  go  back  intending 
to  stay,  in  response  to  this  call,  the  old  country  is  not 
strong  enough  to  hold  them.  Such  was  the  case  with 
this  same  John  Mlinik.  It  was  his  ambition  to  be  a 
well-to-do  farmer  in  Hungary  in  a  few  years,  and  re 
cently  he  and  his  wife  made  a  preliminary  visit  to  his 
old  home  and  bought  a  farm.  They  remained  a  few 
weeks — but  those  few  weeks  were  quite  enough.  He 
came  back  quite  cured.  '  Every  little  clerk  in  the  village 
looked  down  on  me  because  I  did  not  speak  the  official 

*  In  Appendix  IX,  page  448,  will  be  found  references  to  some 
political  memorials  published  by  Slovaks  in  America. 


SLOVAK    EMIGRATION  119 

language,  Magyar,'  Mlinik  said  to  me.  'He  was  an 
official  while  I  was  just  a  peasant.  He  didn't  earn  a 
quarter  of  what  I  do,  yet  I  had  to  bow  to  him.  That 
made  me  sore.  In  America  I'm  a  free  man.  Besides, 
I've  got  a  better  chance  to  do  well  than  in  the  old 
country.  Yes,  America  is  good  enough  for  me.'  "* 

Often  the  first  visit  to  America  is  not  final ;  many  men  ,  Migration 
go  back  and  forth  a  number  of  times.  Of  Bohemian  ^r^and 
immigrants  entering  the  United  States  in  1905  less  than 
six  in  a  hundred  had  been  in  the  country  previously,  of 
the  Slovaks  nearly  a  quarter.  It  is  amazing  how  easily 
this  race,  which  is  at  once  so  migratory  and  so  firmly; 
rooted,  makes  the  long  journey.  They  will  return  to 
see  the  old  parents,  to  attend  to  a  bit  of  legal  business, 
to  settle  an  inheritance  or  sell  off  a  bit  of  land.  Some 
times  the  wife  is  sent  home  to  do  what  is  necessary. 
One  such,  a  simple  peasant  woman  who  had  gone  home 
on  business,  knew  every  detail  of  the  return  trip  to  New 
York,  down  to  the  right  street  car  in  Vienna.  One 
boastful  gentleman  is  said  to  have  written  home,  "As 
far  as  Vienna  the  journey  goes  well;  after  that  it  drags 
a  little." 

But  after  all  the  coming  and  going,  in  the  end  many  I  Final  settle- 
stay  permanently  in  the  new  home.     Thus  an  emigra-  ( America 
tion    movement  which    in    its   inception  seemed  to  be  common 
merely  a  new  phase  of  the  old  Slovak  wandering  indus 
try,  a  turning  to  new  fields  for  temporary  employment, 
comes  to  be    in    effect    a    true    emigration,  which   has 
transferred   to  America    a   substantial   fraction   of   the 
Slovak  nationality. 

*Koukol:    "A  Slav's  a  Man  for  a'  That."     Charities  and  the 
Commons,  XXI,  page  594  (Jan.  2,  1909). 


CHAPTER  VII 

EMIGRATION  FROM  GALICIA:   AUSTRIAN  POLES 
AND  RUTHENIANS 

Galicia,  the  To  many  people  the  word  Galicia  probably  suggests 
little — if  happily  it  does  not  vaguely  recall  the  Spanish 
province  of  the  same  name,  or  even  the  epistle  to  the 
Galatians.  Perhaps,  if  the  country  is  referred  to  as 
Austrian  Poland  instead  of  as  Galicia,  it  seems  more 
tangible,  and  Cracow  and  Lemberg  sound  as  if  we  knew 
something  about  them.  But  to  me  at  least  the  names 
conveyed  no  idea  of  the  reality  until  I  read,  years 
ago,  that  inimitable  sketch  of  Miss  Bowie's  called 
"A  Girl  in  the  Carpathian  Mountains,"  and  learned  for 
the  first  time,  among  other  things,  that  there  are  people 
called  Ruthenians,  and  that  they,  as  well  as  Poles, 
inhabit  Galicia. 

It  is  the  largest  of  the  Austrian  lands.  In  area  it  is 
more  than  half  as  greaTas  the  state  of  New  York,  with 
a  more  numerous  population,  giving  it  a  density  greater 
than  that  of  New  Jersey.  It  stretches  to  the  north  of 
the  Carpathian  arc,  from  Silesia  to  the  Bukowina, 
divided  from  Hungary  to  the  south  by  the  range,  but 
cut  off  from  Russia  to  the  north  by  merely  political 

boundaries.     It  consists  for  the  most  part  of  the  wide, 

^x**»  i. ..... 

windswept  plains  from  which  Poland  took  its  name,* 
but  the  southern  part  is  hilly  or  mountainous.  Zako 
pane,  the  well-known  and  lovely  Polish  summer  resort, 
lies  in  a  nook  of  the  High  Tatra,  the  only  real  peaks  of 
the  chain. 

These  mountains  were  formerly  the  haunts  of  brigands 
who  still  figure  in  legend,  song,  and  dance.  The  tales 

*  Pole  is  the  Polish  word  for  field.  Bukowina  means  beech 
woods  and  refers  to  the  fine  forests  of  that  province. 

120 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  121 

of  Przerwa-Tetmajer,  translated  into  German  as  "Aus 
der  Tatra,"  are  full  of  them,  and  the  novel  of  Emil 
Franzos,  "For  the  Right,"  is  the  story  of  a  Ruthenian 
peasant  driven  to  revolt  and  outlawry  by  his  inner 
insistent  demand  for  righteousness.* 

Even  where  not  so  rugged,  the  hill  country  exposed  to 
the  north  and  cut  off  from  the  south  is  exceedingly  un 
favorable  to  agriculture.  In  high-lying  spots  the  snow 
sometimes  lasts  till  May  and  falls  again  in  October,  so 
that  even  oats  do  not  always  ripen,  but  may  have  to  be 
cut  green  to  serve  merely  as  fodder.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  the  living  is  notoriously  poor;  rye  bread,  potatoes, 
cabbage,  "mamaliga,"  (corn  meal  porridge),  and  milk  if 
there  is  a  cow — these  are  the  staples.  Meat  can  usually 
be  afforded  only  at  Christmas  and  Easter,  but  there  may 
often  be  a  chicken  or  duck  on  the  Sunday  table. 

But  a  worse  drawback  than  the  climate  is  the  economic  Economic 
situation;  the  lack  of  industry,  capital  and  markets,  Sltu'atlon 
trie  backward  agriculture,  the  excessive  subdivision  of 
land,  and  the  excessive  population— excessive,  that  is, 
in  •  proportion  to  means  of  profitably  occupying  it. 
Thus  without  capital  or  commercial  traditions,  and  in  an 
unfavorable  geographical  situation,  Galicia,  to  create 
an  industry,  would  have  to  compete  with  the  highly 
developed  production  of  Silesia,  Moravia,  and  Bohemia, 
which  lie"  just  to  the  west  and  are  within  the  same  cus 
toms  territory.  The  home  market  in  Galicia  itself  is 

~~  w t 

restricted  by  poverty  and  inertia,  and  the  country  to 
the  eastward, f  where  Galicia  would  have  a  slight  ad 
vantage  of  propinquity,  is  cut  off  by  tariff  walls. 

Agriculture  in  Europe,  as  in  New  England,  has  suffered 
from  the  competition  of  new  sources  of  supply,  and 

*  See  also  two  articles  by  Wladyslaw  T.  Benda,  illustrated 
by  the  author:  "Tatra,  A  Mountain  Region  between  Galicia 
and  Hungary,"  The  Century,  vol.  72,  pages  169-179  (June, 
1906) ;  and  "Life  in  a  Polish  Village,"  The  Century,  vol.  76,  pages 
323-332  (July,  1908). 

t  Except  Bukowina,  which  is  in  much  the  same  condition  as 
Galicia. 


122  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

has  found  it  hard  to  hold  its  own  except  in  capitalistic 
and  intensive  forms  like  the  beet-sugar  industry.  In  a 
country  like  Bohemia  this  not  only  furnishes  employ 
ment  in  field  and  factory,  but  supplies  the  neighboring 
farmers  with  fertilizer  and  extremely  valuable  feed  for 
their  cattle.  But  Galicia  has  little  of  such  commer 
cialized  agriculture.  Mining,  except 


of  any  importance,  but  considerable  petroleum  is  pro- 
duced.  "This,  however,  it  largely^n  the  hands  of  capP 
falfs^s'lrbm  outside  the  country,  in  some  cases  of  Ameri 
cans,  and  brings  comparatively  little  money  into  Galicia. 
The  Polish  district,  however,  is  more  advanced  indus 
trially  than  the  Ruthenian  or  eastern  part  of  Galicia. 


The  Tr^popuk^jo^sm^nly  P  olish  in  the  wesfe 

population      T/jT"^^  is 


strong  in  the  neighboring  province  of  the  Bukowina, 
also  makes  itself  felt  in  the  eastern  counties  of  Galicia. 
There  is  besides  considerable  overlapping  and  inter 
mixture,  with  puzzles  for  the  ethnologists,  like  the 
G6rale  or  mountain  folk,  and  the  Huzuls.  The  moun 
tains,  though  a  political  boundary,  seem  to  have  been 
no  serious  barrier,  for  the  Ruthenians  extend  across  them 
in  a  continuous  body  into  Hungary,  while  further  west 
on  the  Hungarian  side  the  Slovaks  of  Upper  Arva  show 
the  influence  of  their  Polish  neighbors  across  the  moun 
tains  to  the  north. 

The  best  criterion  of  nationality  in  this  part  of  the 
world  i^jrejigioa,  and  by  this  test  the  Poles  are  4(fpe 
cent  of  the  population,  the  Ruthenians  42  per  cent  and 
the  Jews  1  1  per  cent  according  to  the  Austrian  census  of 
1900.  The  Ruthenians,  though  fewer  than  the  Poles, 
cover  considerably  more  territory,  occupying  the  central 
as  well  as  the  eastern  district,  and  even  extending  a 
considerable  way  westward  along  the  Carpathians,  as  is 
shown  on  Map  VIII. 

In  the  case  of  both  Poles  and  Ruthenians,  Galicia  is 
only  a  part  of  the  territory  where  they  live.  Each  people 
occupies  a  continuous  area,  of  which  this  province  con- 


in  1 1 


ill11' 

ihll 


s 


i 


1 1 


!i    i! 


I  ll 


i    |h 


II 


i 

s  i  1 1 1 


llHH 

M 


123 


124  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

tains  a  mere  slice  parted  from  the  rest  of  the  homogen 
eous  population  by  historical  accident  and  brute  force, 
and  the  political  boundaries  which  they  have  drawn. 

It  is  accident,  too,  and  force  of  circumstances  that 
lead  me  to  treat  of  the  emigration  of  these  two  great 
groups  in  this  geographical  fashion.  Polish  immigra 
tion,  much  the  most  important  branch  of  the  Slavic 
influx  to  America,  should  be  studied  as  a  whole,  and  at 
the  same  time  with  reference  to  the  special  characteristics 
and  history  of  the  separate  branches  from  Galicia, 
Russia  and  Germany.  I  can  speak  only  incidentally  of 
any  but  the  former,  although  the  Russian  contingent  is 
the  most  numerous.  In  the  case  of  the  Ruthenians, 
confining  our  attention  to  the  contingent  from  Austria- 
Hungary  is  a  less  serious  matter,  for  though  nearly 
nine-tenths  of  them  live  in  Russia,  and  only  one-tenth 
in  Austria-Hungary,  almost  all  who  come  to  us  are 
from  Austria-Hungary.  Each  nationality  will  first  be 
considered  separately. 

The  Poles  Of  the  sad  history  of  Poland,  ruined  at  once  by  its 

under  three  unf  ortunate  internal  conditions  and  by  its  lack  of  natural 
boundaries,  every  one  knows  something.  Once  stretch 
ing  from  the  Baltic  nearly  to  the  Black  Sea,  and  embrac 
ing  a  territory  greater  than  the  present  Austria-Hungary, 
it  is  now  divided  between  the  three  neighboring  em 
pires.  In  the  rough  but  graphic  phrase  of  a  poor  Polish 
woman  in  America,*  "The  Polish  flag  was  bust  and 
Germany,  Russia,  and  Austria  each  took  a  little  bit." 
Poland  lives  as  a  political  entity  only  in  history  and  in 
the  never-failing  hopes  of  its  children.  The  final  ad 
justment  of  the  prey  gave  Russia  the  lion's  share,  with 
more  than  three-quarters  of  the  territory,  and  two- 
thirds  of  the  sixteen  million  or  so  inhabitants.  Austria 
received  only  about  one-eighth  of  the  territory,  but  about 
one-fifth  of  the  Polish  population,  most  of  them  in 

*  Quoted  by  Elizabeth  T.  White  in  her  article,  "  Investigation 
of  Slavic  Conditions  in  Jersey  City,"  published  for  Whittier 
House,  1907. 


POLES  FROM  ABOUT  CRACOW 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  125 

Galicia,  with  a  smaller  body  in  the  neighboring  territory 
of  Silesia. 

The  condition  of  the  Poles  under  their  three  sovereigns 
differs  considerably.  In .  Gerrnariy^^jy-lijjft  tfrft  ..EfiLsg. 
have  enjoyed jorder,jja.d  opportunity  for  progress  along 
German  lines,  they  have  also  suffered  from  the  most 
determined  effort  to  suppress  national  feeling,  to  wipe 
out  the  Polish  language,  and  of  late  to  forcibly  dispos 
sess  Polish  land-owners  in  favor  of  German. 

fa~Russian  Poland,  while  there  is  not  the  racial  con 
tempt  for  all  things  Slavic  which  the  German  is  too  apt 
to  feel,  the  Poles  have  suffered  from  oppressive  special 
legislation,  as  "well  as  from  the  tyranny  and  corruption 
wliicrTTiave  been  the  curse  of  all  parts  of  Russia,  and  of 
late,  of  course,  from  the  disturbed  condition  of  the  empire. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  country,  especially  about  Warsaw 
and  Lodz,  has  become  a  great  industrial  centre,  protected 
by  Russian  tariffs  and  enjoying  the  vast  Russian  home 
market.  Here  for  the  first  time  in  their  history  the 
Poles,  who  have  always  been  either  nobles  or  peasants, 
have  developed  a  middle  class,  commercial  and  in 
dustrial. 

The  Austrian  government,  in  contrast  to  the  Russian 
and  German,  has  for  some  time  pursued  a  political  policy 
friendly  to  the  Poles,  but  nowhere  else  do  they  find' them 
selves  in  so  bad  an  economic  plight  _as  jn  Galicia;  the 
causes  for  this  have  already  been  touched  upon. 

In  religion  the  Poles^jn  spite  of  some  episodes  of  Religion 
Protestantism   and   even   of   Unitarianism   in   the    Re 
formation  period,*  are  almost  universally  zealous  Rojnan^,... 
Catholics.^    So  generally  is^lnTs^lHe^ca'sTTn^t  Galician 
agents  whose  business  it  is  to  fill  out  the  manifests  which 
are  required  by  our  immigration  laws,  and  on  which 
our  immigration  statistics  are  based,  write  a  man  down 
a  Pole  if  he  is  a  Roman  Catholic,  regardless  of  any  other 
fact.     The    zealous    character    of    Roman    Catholicism 

*  For  references  on  this  subject  see  the  Bibliography  under 
Polish  Religious  History. 


126  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

among  the  Poles,  as  among  the  Irish,  has  political  as  well 

f  as  religious  roots.     To  them,  too,  the  political  enemy 

is  also  the  religious  opponent.     The  Russian  schismatic, 

the   Tatar   heathen,    the    Turkish    Mohammedan,    the 

Swedish  Lutheran,  were  all  detestable  on  patriotic  and 

religious  grounds  alike. 

The  Ru-  The  people  who  share  Galicia  with  the  Poles,  and  whom 

themans:        j  have  been  speakinsr  of  as  Ruthenians,  have  a  most 

nomencla-  .  .  ... 

ture  confusing  variety  of  names,  and  the  situation  is  com 

plicated  by  the  fact  that  the  choice  of  one  or  another 
name  often  implies  political  preferences.  The  official 
Russian  term  for  them  is  Little  Russians  (Malo-Russians) . 
Again  they  are  called,  from  words  used  by  themselves, 
Russniaks  or  Russinians.  The  name  Ukrainian  refers 
to  the  great  Ukraine  district  of  Southern  Russia,  and  is 
generally  used  by  those  who  desire  a  separate  political 
future  for  the  nationality.  Those  of  a  contrary  ten 
dency,  who  wish  to  ignore  differences  and  to  merge  with 
the  Great  Russian  nationality  which  is  predominant  iri 
the  empire  of  the  Czar,  call  themselves  simply  Russians  ; 
and  those  who  are  called  Russians  in  the  United  States 
are  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases  properly  Little  Russians. 
The  classification  of  our  immigration  reports  has  for 
them  the  heading  " Ruthenians  (Russniaks)."  I  have 
used  the  term  Ruthenian  because  it  seemed  to  me  to 
be  on  the  whole  the  most  current.  It  often  is  used  to 
refer  especially  to  those  of  the  group  who  live  in  Austria 
and  Hungary,  and  as  practically  all  our  immigrants  come 
from  these  countries,  it  is  the  most  satisfactory  for  our 
purpose. 

Number  and       This nationality._is-xlosely-  rektteti  'to 'th'e'" "Russians" 

(Great  Russians)  though  distinct  in  language  and  his 
tory.  They  number  some  30,000,000,  about  26,000,000 
of  whom  liveTin  southern  Russia.  Thence  they  extend 
over  eastern  Galicia,  the  western  part  of  the  Bukowina, 
and  across  the  Carpathians,  as  already  said,  into  north 
eastern  Hungary,  occupying  in  all  a  continuous  territory 
half  as  large  again  as  the  German  empire. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  127 

Their  history,  though  less  well  known  than  that  of  the  Their  his- 
Poles,  is  also  ancient  and  romantic.     The^chie 
Kieff  or  Kiev,was  the  capital   of  the  country  before  tic 
Moscow  was  founded  in  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  cen 
tury.     When    soon    after    this    the    invasions    of    the 
Tatars    began,  the   wide  open  steppes  of  the  Ukraine 
lay  exposed  to  their  raids,  and  thus  were  created  the 
conditions  which  moulded  the  wild,  roving  life  of  the 
Zaporogian   Cossacks   such   as   Gogol,   himself  a   Little 
Russian,  has  painted  in  his  brilliant  story  "  Taras  Bulba." 
Although  they  had  been  free  as  the  winds,  and  had  known 
neither   serfdom   nor   hereditary   rulers,    they^fejJL.JLate^-- 
under  the  domination  oj^J^ej^jin^R^ 
them  to  be  hard  masters.     Serfdom,  especially,  though 

ri   of  the  common  people  of 


Europe,  was  odious  to  this  liberty-loving  race,  and  their 
bitter  resentment  of  tyranny  has  been  attested  not  only 
by  the  revolt  under  Chmyelnicki  in  1648  (pictured  from 
the  Polish  point  of  view  by  Sienkiewicz  in  his  famous 
historical  romance,  "With  Fire  and  Sword"),  and  by  that 
of  a  half  century  later  under  Mazeppa  (known  to  us 
mainly  by  the  incident  of  his  youth  popularized  by  Byron 
and  the  circus)  ,  but  also  by  peasant  risings  of  recent  years.  * 

Not  only  in  history  but  in  literature  the  Little  Russians  Literature 
have  an  honorable  place.  They  had  free  printing  presses 
for  secular  as  well  as  religious  literature  as  early  as  the 
sixteenth  century,  but  many  of  their  best  writers,  in 
cluding  Gogol,  have  used  the  Great  Russian  language 
even  when  their  themes  were  Little  Russian,  much  as 
Sir  Walter  Scott  wrote  his  Scotch  novels  in  literary 
English.  In  1798  began  a  renascence  of  the  language 
as  a  literary  medium,  and  it  has  since  been  employed 
by  authors  of  international  repute,  the  greatest  of  whom 
is  the  poet  Shevchenko.  Like  Russians  and  Servians, 
the  Little  Russians  use  the  Cyrillic  characters.  Appar- 

*  Terrible  pictures  of  oppression  by  Polish  landlords  and 
violent  revenge  by  the  Ruthenian  peasantry  are  given  in  stories 
of  Franzos  in  his  "Aus  Halb-Asien,  Culturbilder  aus  Galizien, 
der  Bukowina,  Sud-Russland  und  Rumanien." 


128 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Folksongs 


Uniates 


ently  Great  Russians  and  Little  Russians  are  mutually 
quite  unintelligible  and  the  best  authorities  seem  to 
agree  that  the  tongue  spoken  by  the  latter  is  not  to  be 
considered  as  a  dialect,  but  as  an  independent  language. 

Of  all  Slavic  peoples,  perhaps  the  Little  Russians  are 
most  celebrated  for  their  profusion  of  popular  lyrics. 
One  collector  gathered  eight  thousand  in  a  single  district. 
These  songs  are  of  love  and  war,  of  haughty  Poles  and 
cruel  Tatars  and  love-sick  maidens,  and  are  apt  to  be 
mournful  and  tender. 

I  am  told  that  here  in  the  United  States  the  Ruthen- 
ians  continue  to  produce  new  songs,  but  that  their 
American  lyrics  telling  of  work  in  the  dark  mine  and  of 
the  hardness  of  the  "boss"  are  neither  so  fine  nor  so 
free  in  spirit  as  the  old.  But  on  the  wide  plains  of  the 
Canadian  Northwest,  as  independent  landowners,  they 
find  a  more  congenial  life.  Michael  Gowda  has  not  only 
translated  into  Little  Russian  Whittier's  "Snow  Bound" 
and  much  other  literature,  but  has  written  original 
verse  in  his  own  tongue  for  his  countrymen  in  Canada.* 

In  religion  the  Little  Russians  had  always,  like  the 
Great  Russians,  been  Greek  Orthodox,  unti^inj^^^fter 
various  previous  attempts,  the  Jesuits  succeeded  in 
bringing  large  numbers  over  into  the  Roman  fold. 
They  accepted  allegiance  to  the  pope  on  very  favorable 
terms,  however,  and  were  allowed  to  keep  so  much  of 
what  had  always  been  peculiar  to  the  Orthodox  church, 
that  these  Uniates,  United  Catholics,  or  Greek  Catholics, 
as  they  are  called,  are  still  separated  from  other  Roman 
Catholics  by  marked  religious  differences. f 

The  married  priests  with  their  long  beards,  the  mass  in 
Slavonic  instead  of  in  Latin,  the  arrangement  of  the 
church  with  the  great  gilt  screen — the  ik6nostas — hiding 

*  A  sketch  of  Gowda's  work  and  an  English  translation  of  his 
poem  "To  Canada,"  will  be  found  in  Appendix  XI,  page  449. 

f  Four  very  instructive  articles,  "Our  Russian  Catholics; 
The  Greek  Ruthenian  church  in  America,"  by  A.  J.  Shipman, 
will  be  found  in  the  Jesuit  magazine,  The  Messenger,  of  New 
York,  beginning  with  the  number  for  Sept.,  1904. 


RUTHENIANS    AND    GALICIAN    JEWS 

1.  Ruthenian  shepherd  lads.  Lads  like  these,  piping  among  their  sheep  beside  a  brook 
or  dancing  with  their  sweethearts  on  the  grass,  seem  to  us  absolutely  Arcadian.  On  our  streets, 
speaking  broken  and  vulgarized  English,  dressed  in  ill-fitting  ready-made  clothes,  bewildered 
by  their  strange  surroundings,  they  are  too  apt  to  seem  to  us  "stolid,"  "low,"  "mere  animals." 
2  and  4.  Galician  Jews.  The  curls  before  the  ears  are  a  necessity  to  the  orthodox.  The  fur 
trimmed  cap  (see  4)  and  the  long  coat  are  typical.  3.  Ruthenian  peasant  with  wooden  ware, 
the  product  of  a  considerable  house  industry. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  I2Q 

the  altar,  the  communion  in  both  kinds  given  to  the 
laity,  the  use  of  the  Eastern  form  of  the  cross  with  three 
cross-bars  the  lower  one  oblique,  the  calendar  thirteen 
days  behind  the  Roman, — all  these  things  make  the 
Greek  Catholics  or  Uniates  strange  to  the  Roman  Catho 
lics,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  are  in  full  communion, 
members  of  the  same  church.  Almost  the  only  marks  of 
the  severance  of  the  Uniates  from  the  Greek  Orthodox 
and  of  their  Roman  connection  are  the  prayer  for  the 
pope,  which  replaces  that  for  the  czar  as  head  of  the 
church,  and  the  passage  in  the  creed  which  affirms  the 
procession  of  the  Holy  Ghost  from  the  Son  as  well  as  from 
the  Father.  By  no  means  all  Ruthenians  in  Austria  and 
Hungary  are  Greek  Catholic  or  Uniate.  A  considerable 
number,  mainly  of  those  in  the  Bukowina,  are  still 
Greek  Orthodox. 

We  have  many  of  their  churches  in  America,  generally 
easily  distinguished  from  the  Catholic  churches  by  the 
display  of  the  three-barred  cross.  In  these  churches  one 
sees,  here  and  in  Europe,  the  most  naive  and  touching 
demonstrations  of  piety.  The  head  is  bared  before  the 
crucifix  which  stands  before  the  church ;  on  entering  the 
building  the  forehead  is  touched  again  and  again  to 
the  ground;  the  ikons  are  kissed  with  fervor,  and  the 
wonderful  chanting  of  the  Greek  rite,  which  permits 
no  instrumental  music,  fills  the  congregation  with 
religious  emotion. 

The  Ruthenian  popas  or  priests  have  a  very  curious   Ruthenian 
status.     They  long  constituted  almost  a  separate  caste,   Pnests 
recruited   from   their   own   ranks,    and   marrying   their 
daughters  to  priests'  sons  only.*     They  occupy  quite  a 
different  position  from  the  unmarried  Catholic  priest  of 
Western  Europe,  though  I  should  judge  a  higher  one  than 
the  Russian  village  clergy.     As  to  the  advantages  of 

*  Intimate  and  interesting  pictures  of  the  life  of  Ruthenian 
clerical  families  will  be  found  in  stories  by  "Dorothea  Gerard"; 
namely,  "The  Supreme  Crime,"  and  "The  Wrong  Man." 

9 


130 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Relations 
between 
Poles  and 
Ruthenians 


celibacy  for  the  priesthood,  opinions  of  course  will  vary 
with  belief  and  experience.  A  very  intelligent  Ruthe- 
nian  village  priest  with  whom  I  talked  in  Galicia  held 
strongly  that  the  married  man  is  the  better  priest.  He 
thought  that  unmarried  priests  are  sent  by  preference 
to -America  to  avoid  scandal  among  Roman  Catholics 
here,  unused  to  a  married  priesthood,  but  that  these 
priests  are  as  a  rule  morally  inferior  and  much  less  able 
to  understand  the  wants  and  feelings  of  their  people 
than  those  with  families.  I  fear  that  in  general  it  is  too 
often  true  that  priests  and  ministers  sent  to  serve  emi 
grant  colonies  of  all  sorts,  Italian,  Hungarian  or  what 
not,  are  apt  to  be  unworthy  representatives  of  their 
class — either  dull,  bad,  or  otherwise  below  the  normal. 
On  the  other  hand  one  meets  shining  exceptions,  and  it 
happens  that  I  have  known  a  number  of  Ruthenian 
priests  in  this  country,  of  consecration,  intelligence  and 
energy  beyond  the  ordinary.  One  of  these  was  carrying 
on  an  intelligence  office  for  his  people.  Of  the  many* 
sided  labors  of  another  I  have  written  in  a  little  article, 
"A  Shepherd  of  Immigrants,"  originally  published  in 
Charities.* 

In  the  districts  of  Eastern  Galicia  where  Polish  lords 
were  set  over  a  Ruthenian  peasantry,  the  subjection 
of  the  latter  was  embittered  by  the  fact  that  the  Little 
Russian  had  always  been  a  freeman,  and  by  the  intol 
erance  of  the  Pole  toward  a  class  not  only  socially  inferior, 
but  alien  in  speech  and  above  all  in  religion.  Modern 
conditions  have  not  done  away  with  the  age-long  tradi 
tions  of  hjniRt.il fay.  Tn  Ruthenian  organs  are  printed 
tales  of  incredible  cases  of  barbarity  of  Poles  to  Ruthe 
nian  dependents.  The  Ruthenians  claim  that  Vienna, 
in  order  to  keep  the  political  friendship  of  the  Poles, 
has  given  them  a  free  hand  in  provincial  affairs,  and  that 
they  use  their  power  to  oppress  the  racial  minority  and 
resort  to  the  most  shameless  political  chicanery  to  effect 
their  purposes.  All  this,  whether  true  or  not,  intensifies 
*  Charities,  XIII,  pages  193-4  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  131 

the  ill-feeling,  and  the  friction  between  race  and  race, 
added  to  the  friction  between  Christian  and  Jew,  is  one 
of  the  curses  of  this  unhappy  province. 

Much  that  is  inexplicable  to  Americans  in  the  rela 
tions  of  Slavs  in  this  country  is  explained  by  old  happen 
ings  in  Europe.  For  unfortunately  the  political  and 
religious  tension  between  Ruthenians  and  Poles,  between 
Roman  Catholics,  Greek  Orthodox  and  Uniates  is  not 
at  once  removed  by  emigration  to  America.  Especially 
is  the  Russian  state  church,  which  maintains  a  mission  in 
this  country,  and  counts  some  fifty  Orthodox  churches 
in  the  United  States  proper,  besides  an  equal  number  in 
Alaska,  regarded  with  great  jealousy  by  Catholics,  both 
Greek  and  Roman,  as  proselytizing. 

After  this  brief  account  of  the  two  Slavic  nationalities   Emigration 
of  Galicia,  let  us  turn  to  the  history  of  their  emigration.   J^J^p 
Polishje  ;migration  is^tj^^ajjj,ex^and,  like  the  Bohemian,   to  America 
has  a  long  past  —  even  without  counting  John  of  Kolno 
who  is  said  to  have  commanded  Danish  ships  that  rounded 
the  coast  of  Labrador  in  1476,  or  the  various  scattered 
settlers  of  the  colonial  period,  or  dwelling  too  much  on 
the   revolutionary   heroes   Kosciuszko   and   Pulaski,   or 
on  Niemcewicz,  friend  and  biographer  of  Washington, 
who  is  an  important  figure  in  Polish  literary  history.  ^ 
ThejDplitical  movements  in  Poland  in  1831  and  1848  sent 
us  refugees,  and  in  1863  a  Polish  paper  was  being  pub- 
lishecTrrn^ew  York  and  collecting  subscriptions  for  "the 
January    rebellion,"    including    some    donations    from 
"Poles   of  the  faith   of   Moses."     In   1854   some  three 
hundred  Polish  families  emigrated  from  Prussian  Silesia 
to  Texas,  where  they  founded  a  settlement  named  for  the 
Virgin,  Panna  Marya.* 

Up  to  1870,  however,  the  movement  was  still  essenti 


ally  sporadic,  the  number  of  immigrants  small.     Their 
quality  was  such,  however,  as  to  give  them  a  significance 

*For  a  fuller  history  of  Polish  emigration  to  America,  see 
Chapter  XI. 


132 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Origin  and 
spread  of 
emigration 


out  of  proportion  to  their  numbers,  and  the  record  of 
Polish  citizens  in  the  Civil  War  was  a  brilliant  one. 

The  Polish  emigration,  where  it  wras  an  economic  mass 
movement,  not  a  political  necessity  of  individuals,  and 
in  so  far  as  it  did  not  originate  independently,  doubtless 
spread  from  Germans  to  German  Poles,  from  them  to 
the  Poles  in  western  Galicia,  and  from  them  to  the 
Ruthenians  of  eastern  Galicia  and  the  Bukowina. 
Like  emigration  movements  in  general,  it  was  propagated 
ever  more  to  the  East. 

It. was  in  the  decade  1870-1880  that  Galicia  first  began 
to  lose  population.  In  the  previous  decade  immigrants 
had  exceeded  emigrants  by  67,415.  In  the  following 
decades,  on  the  contrary,  emigrants  exceeded  immi 
grants  as  follows:  1870—1880,1,997;  1881—1890,81,997; 
1891-1900,  340,833.* 

In  Galicia,  as  is  so  often  the  case,  emigration  to  Amer 
ica  was  only  one  part  of  a  wider  migratory  movement. 
The  Poles  had  long  been  going  as  settlers  either  to  east 
ern  Galicia,  the  Bukowina,  or  across  the  Dnieper  into 
Russia.  In  the  early  seventies,  when  this  no  longer 
afforded  sufficient  outlet,  a  movement  began  to  the 
industrial  regions  of  Bohemia,  Moravia,  Silesia  and  lower 
Austria;  and  also,  with  varying  fates,  to  different  parts  of 
South  America,  and  to  some  extent  to  the  United  States. 

The  current  once  started  has  flowed  on  at  an  acceler- 
census  data  athig  rate,  until  Polish  emigration,  drawn  as  it  has  been 
from  all  three  Empires,  became  of  first  class  importance 
among  immigration  movements.  While  the  decade  1870- 
1880  added  nearly  35,000  natives  of  Poland  to  the  popu 
lation  of  the  United  States  as  shown  by  the  census,  the 
decade  ending  in  1880  added  nearly  99,000,  and  the  last 
decade,  1890—1900,  nearly  236,000.  In  1900  the  natives 
of  Poland  in  the  United  States  were  383,407,!  or  twenty- 
six  times  as  many  as  a  generation  earlier,  in  1870. 

*  See  Buzek:  "Das  Auswanderungs-Problem,"  page  444. 
f  The  census  further  distinguishes  the  parts  of  Poland.     The 
1900  figures  are  Poland   (Austrian)   58,503;    Poland   (German) 


American 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA 


133 


The.  American  immigration  data  do  not  ma.kg.it  -pos-  Irnmigra- 
sible  to  specifically  distinguish  the  Poles  and  Ruthenians  tlon  data 
till  1899.  In  that  year  the  Polish  immigrants  were 
28,446  out  of  a  total  of  311, 715,  or  9  per  cent  of  the  whole. 
As  shown  in  the  table  below,  the  numbers  rose  with 
some  setbacks  until  they  reached  over  138,000  in  1907, 
or  nearly  1 1  per  cent  of  the  immense  wave  of  immigra 
tion  of  that  year.  The  Polish  contingent  from  Germany 
is  throughout  subordinate.  Until  the  last  two  years 
Russia  and  Austria-Hungary  sent  about  equal  numbers 
of  Poles,  sometimes  one,  sometimes  the  other  leading, 
but  in  1907  and  1908  Russia  sent  far  the  largest  contri 
bution. 


TABLE    10.— NUMBER    OF    POLISH    AND    RUTHENIAN 

IMMIGRANT  ALIENS  ADMITTED  TO  THE  UNITED 

STATES,  1899-1909. 


POLES  FROM 

RUTHENIANS   FROM 

ALL   COUNTRIES 

YEAR 

All 

ended 

Austria-Hungary 

Ger 

Russia 

Coun 

June 

many 

tries 

30 

1899 
1900 

1  1,  660 
22,802 

1,271 

15,517 
22,500 

28,446 
46,938 

1,400 
2,832 

1901 
1902 

20,288 

1^844 
3,313 

2i,475 

33,859 

43.617 
69,620 

5,288 
7,533 

1903 

37,499 

5,252 

39,548 

82,343 

9,843 

1904 

30,243 

4,901 

32,577 

67,757 

9,592 

f    Austria 

Austria 

1905 

5°>785  j  Hungary 

3,858 

47,224 

102,437 

J4,473 

10,982 
Hungary 

I        335 

3,268 

1906 

48,803 

4,108 

46,204 

95,835  16,257 

1907 

59,7*9 

3,888 

73,122 

138,033  24,081 

1908 

26,423 

2,320)37,947 

68,105  12,361 

1909 

36,483 

1,320 

37-77° 

77,565 

15,808 

150,232;  Poland  (Russian)  154,424;  Poland  (unknown)  20,436. 
These  figures  include  all  persons  born  in  the  territory  which 
the  census  still  enters  as  Poland,  and  include  a  very  large 
though  incalculable  proportion  of  Jews,  born  in  German, 
Austrian  and  Russian  Poland,  as  well  as  Ruthenians  and  other 
non-Polish  elements,  while  on  the  other  hand  they  exclude  the 
large  numbers  who  are  Polish  by  extraction  and  feeling,  though 
not  by  birth.  For  estimates  of  their  numbers  see  Chapter  XIII. 


134 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  Ru- 
thenian 
movement 


Emigration 
areas 


4 'The  first 
man  who 
went  to 
America" 


The  Ruthenian  emigration,  while  smaller  and  later 
than  the  Polish,  .has  proportionately  grown  much  faster. 
While  the  flood  year  1907  brought  between  four  and  five 
times  as  many  Poles  as  came  in  1899,  it  brought  over 
seventeen  times  as  many  Ruthenians.  The  Ruthenians 
almost  all  came  from  Austria-Hungary,  but  how  many 
from  each  is  unknown  except  for  the  year  1905,  when 
alone  the  data  are  given  separately.  In  that  year  over 
75  per  cent  of  the  Ruthenians  came  from  Austria  (sc. 
Galicia),  over  22  per  cent  from  Hungary,  while  from  the 
Russian  millions  not  200  individuals  came. 

The  relative  intensity  of  the  emigration  movement  in 
different  parts  of  Galicia  can  be  seen  on  Map  V.  The 
whole  province  showed  in  the  decade  1890-1900  a  net 
loss  by  emigration  of  nearly  4. 58 "per  cent  of  its  popula 
tion  but  this  average  included  various'  mainly  urban 
districts,  which  actually  gained,  as  well  as  many 
districts  which  lost  only  slightly.  Some,  on  the  other, 
hand,  lost  as  much  as  13  per  cent  or  14  per  cent.  By 
comparing  Map  V  with  Map  VIII  which  shows  the  dis 
tricts  occupied  by  Poles  and  Ruthenians  respectively, 
it  will  be  noted  that  the  area  which  lost  5  per  cent  or 
over  covers  practically  all  the  Polish  district  (except 
about  Cracow  and  Lemberg),  an  adjoining  corner  of 
Ruthenian  territory  along  the  Carpathians  (Lisko  and 
part  of  Sanok),  and  most  of  the  Ruthenian  districts  to 
the  northeast.  The  place  that  lost  the  most  was  Mielec, 
near  the  Tatra  and  adjoining  the  Hungarian  county  of 
Arva,  which  lost  14.43  Per  cent. 

It  will  be  noted  in  Table  3  that  Galicia  exceeds  all 
other  parts  of  Austria  in  the  excess  of  births  over  deaths, 
which  gave  it  in  the  decade  in  question  a  natural  in 
crease  of  15.3  per  cent.  With  a  loss  by  migration  of 
4.58  per  cent,  the  already  overburdened  province  still 
added  nearly  1 1  per  cent  to  its  population  in  the  decade. 

When  making  inquiries  about  the  history  of  an  emigra 
tion  movement,  one  is  always  hearing  rumors  about  the 
original  emigrant,  and  in  Galicia  I  drove  many  rainy 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  135 

miles  to  see  a  Ruthenian  priest  who  was  said  to  have 
known  "the  first  man  who  went  to  America."  His 
story  was  as  follows: 

"The  first  emigrant  went  in  1877  or  1878.  It  was  in 
this  way.  The  peasants  cannot  live  on  their  land.  It  has 
been  subdivided  and  subdivided  until  a  man  has  too  little 
to  get  a  living  by,  even  as  they  live  here.  In  some  places 
they  eked  it  out  by  weaving  cloth  on  old  house  looms 
during  the  winter,  and  hawking  it  about  in  the  summer. 
Then  the  railroad  was  put  through,  the  transversal  road 
that  runs  south  of  the  old  Lemberg-Cracow  line,  nearer  the 
Carpathians.  That  was  about  1875.  This  road  brought 
in  factory  products  from  Silesia  and  other  places,  and 
ruined  weaving  and  all  the  old  home  industries.  One 
of  these  weavers,  a  Pole  from  about  Jaslo  I  think,  used 
to  come  up  this  way  with  his  goods,  and  in  Radocyna 
there  was  a  peasant  that  he  always  stayed  with  when  he 
was  there.  The  last  time  he  came  was  a  few  years  after 
the  railroad  was  built,  and  he  said  his  trade  was  ruined, 
and  he  was  thinking  of  going  to  America.  He  had  heard 
across  the  mountains  in  Hungary  that  people  were  going 
to  the  United  States,  and  doing  well  there. 

"At  that  time  the  government  was  doing  all  in  its 
power  to  stop  emigration.  Letters  were  opened,  and  if 
they  praised  America  they  were  held  back.  Of  course 
this  was  illegal,  but  the  Staathalterei  gave  orders  to  do 
it.  The  weaver  promised  that  when  he  got  to  New  York 
he  would  let  his  Radocyna  friend  know  how  he  got  on, 
but  instead  of  writing  it  all  out  he  arranged  to  prick 
the  letter  through  if  things  in  America  were  not  satis 
factory. 

"After  a  time  the  man  in  Radocyna  got  a  letter  from 
his  friend  in  New  York,  and  it  was  not  pricked.  So  he 
went  to  the  priest  and  told  him  all  about  the  matter; 
that  he  was  going  to  New  York,  but  that  he  did  not 
want  his  wife  or  any  one  else  to  know,  and  he  got  the 
priest  to  promise  to  keep  his  secret. 

"He  reached  New  York  all  right,  but  he  had  lost  the 


136  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

address  of  the  weaver,  he  could  not  speak  English  nor 
even  German,  and  his  money  ran  out.  He  was  three 
days  without  eating  anything.  He  sat  down  in  the  street 
and  cried,  and  a  gentleman  coming  by  stopped  and  spoke 
to  him  in  Polish,  and  asked  him  if  he  was  not  a  Ruthe- 
nia;n.  He  knew  him  by  his  clothes. 

"  The  gentleman  was  a  literary  man,  a  Pole  or  maybe  a 
Polish  Jew.  At  any  rate,  he  took  the  man  home  with 
him  and  employed  him  for  a  while  until  he  got  work  with 
a  telegraph  company,  and,  later  on,  with  a  railroad. 
Wages  were  better  for  emigrants  then  than  they  are  now. 
In  half  a  year  he  sent  money  home  to  his  wife,  and  after 
a  time  he  sent  for  his  family.  Other  people  from  the 
village  began  to  go,  and  from  that  on,  it  spread. 

"The  government  tried  to  make  the  priests  read  a 
proclamation  against  going  to  America.  It  said  that 
people  would  die  of  hunger  there,  and  the  priests  were 
to  preach  about  this  to  their  people.  But  they  had  a 
conference  and  talked  it  over  together.  They  knew 
that  money  came  from  America,  and  that  people  were 
treated  there  like  human  beings,  and  they  promised  one 
another  to  all  ignore  the  order.  That  was  in  1880.  I 
have  destroyed  the  proclamation  that  I  had.  The 
government  used  to  send  gendarmes  to  the  frontier  and 
arrest  those  who  went  over.  So  the  emigrants  generally 
went  into  Prussia  on  foot,  and  took  the  railroad  there. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  devices  for  getting  through,  such 
as  taking  wagon-loads  of  baskets  for  sale,  and  so  on. 

"These  peasants  have  plenty  of  native  wit.  One 
man  wrote  me  that  he  had  finally  got  through  to  Bremen 
all  right,  but  that  on  the  frontier  he  had  been  arrested, 
and  as  he  was  being  led  off  he  stooped  as  if  to  tie  up  his 
shoes  (moccasin-like  affairs,  bound  about  the  ankle 
with  thongs) ,  and  picked  up  a  great  handful  of  wet  mud 
and  threw  it  in  the  face  of  the  man  who  had  arrested 
him.  And  while  the  gendarme  was  working  his  eyes 
clear,  he  got  away.  Another  man,  named  Michael, 
bought  his  ticket  only  to  the  border  station,  so  that  it 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  137 

would  not  be  supposed  that  he  meant  to  leave  the  country. 
But  his  wife  went  with  him  part  way,  and  she  cried  so 
much  that  it  betrayed  him,  and  he  was  arrested.  He 
got  leave  from  the  gendarme  to  go  back  for  his  bundle, 
and  instead  of  returning  with  it,  got  into  a  second-class 
compartment  of  his  train.  Of  course  no  one  dreamed  of 
looking  for  him  there,  so  he  got  away  too. 

"The  employers  are  greatly  set  against  emigration  be 
cause  it  carries  off  farm  hands  and  raises  wages.  And 
so  are  the  Jews.  The  people  here  were  much  in  debt 
to  the  Jews,  who  had  everything,  but  America  has  freed 
them  from  that." 

Such  was  the  story  of  the  beginning  of  Galician  emigra-  Cause  of 
tion  to  America,  and  almost  every  point  in  it  is  typical, 
as  we  know  by  other  investigations — the  breaking  in 
upon  a  hardly  balanced  peasant  economy  of  modern-com 
petition  in  the  shape  of  railroad-borne  factory  wares, 
the  effect  on  money-lender  and  landlord,  and  their  conse 
quent  opposition. 

Trie  conditions  out  of  which  Galician  emigration  Occupations 
springs  are  sufficiently  obviousin  the  Austrian  census  data, 
which  show  not  only  that  Galicia  is  an... overwhelmingly 
agricultural  country,  but  that  agriculture  is  mainly 
carried  on  by  families  doing  all  the  work  themselves, 
and  on  the  smallest  possible  scale.* 

The   darkest   side   of   the   situation   of   the   Galician  Small  size  of 
peasant  is  the  extreme  subdivision  of  the  land.     Feudal  holdmgs 

*  As  already  shown  on  page  47,  one  would  expect  to  find 
Poles  and  Ruthenians  appear  in  our  immigration  statistics 
with  an  overwhelming  proportion  of  agricultural  occupation. 
But  while  the  United  States  authorities  provide  the  headings 
Laborer,  Farm  laborer,  and  Farmer,  an  emigration  agent  in 
Galicia,  already  mentioned,  whose  business  it  is  to  fill  out 
these  blanks,  told  me  that  if  a  man  has  no  special  trade  he 
enters  him  as  a  laborer,  even  if  the  man  had  been  a  peasant 
who  did  no  work  for  wages  but  farmed  his  own  land  inde 
pendently.  He  "considered  the  matter  mainly  with  reference 
to  what  the  man  would  become  in  America."  This  prophetic 
method  of  dealing  with  the  facts  naturally  vitiates  the  figures, 
and  makes  it  impossible  to  get  from  them  any  answer  to  the 
important  questions  as  to  what  proportion  are  agriculturists, 
and  of  these  what  proportion  are  independent  property  owners. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Lack  of 


arrangements,  as  explained  in  Chapter  IV,  formerly 
kept  the  peasant  holdings  intact  and  of  regulation  size, 
but  since  1868  they  have  been  freely  divided  between 
children,  and  have  come  to  be  excessively  cut  up.  Of 
all  the  agricultural  properties  in  the  country,  nearly  80 
per"  cent  are  "small"  (that  is,  under  twelve  and  a  half 
acres),  and  nearly  half  consist  of  less  than  five  acres* 
The  same  facts  are  reflected  in  the  figures  which  show 
what  a  large  proportion  of  those  occupied  in  agriculture 
are  independent  producers  or  members  of  their  families 
working  with  them.f 

That  this  excessive  subdivision  is  the  main  cause  of 
emigration  from  Galicia  is  undisputed.  When  a  man 
has  so  little  land  that  it  can  no  longer  support  him, 
much  less  provide  for  his  children,  he  probably  gets 
into  debt,  and  at  any  rate  is  in  imperative  need  of  money. 
As  already  said,  for  the  peasant  to  lose  his  land  and  be 
come  a  mere  laborer  is  a  great  step  downward  socially, 
for  himself  and  his  descendants,  and  one  which  he  will 
sacrifice  much  to  avoid.  To  keep  his  land,  and  if  it  is 
mortgaged,  to  pay  the  interest,  he  must  find  paying 
work.  Farm  wages,  although  they  have  risen,  are  far 
from  high,  and  the  demand  for  farm  labor  has  been 
lessened  in  three  ways:  first,  by  this  rise  of  wages; 
second,  by  the  increased  use  of  farm  machinery;  and 
third,  in  some  places  by  the  breaking  up  of  large  es 
tates. 

While  opportunities  to  earn  money  at  farm  work  are 
so  Poor>  °f  opportunities  for  industrial  employment  there 
are  practically  none.  Manufacturing,  so  highly  de- 

*  In  the  fifty  "parishes  in  the  political  district  Skalat,  32 
per  cent  of  the  "rustical"  (sc.  peasant)  holdings  were,  in  1882,  less 
than  1  1  acres,  nearly  60  per  cent  were  under  four  acres  and  a  half. 
It  is  estimated  that  a  man  must  have  fourteen  and  a  fifth  acres 
(10  yokes)  to  get  his  living  by  working  his  own  land  and  to 
fully  occupy  his  time.  Over  70  per  cent  have  not  more  than 
half  this,  and  only  about  one  holding  in  ten  is  above  this  mini 
mum  of  independent  farming. 

See  Pilat:  "Die  Auswanderung  aus  den  Podolischen  Be- 
zirken  nach  Russland  in  Jahre  1892,"  page  76. 

f  Cf.  Table  2,  page  46. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  139 

veloped  in  Russian  Poland,  has,  as  already  explained, 
little  chance  to  thrive  in  Austrian  Poland.  The  con 
sequence  is  a  forced  migration  in  search  of  work.  Every 
season  carries  a  horde  of  so-called  Sachsenganger  across 
the  border  into  Germany,  to  work  on  farms  during  the 
summer,*  but  increasing  numbers  reason,  "If  we  must 
leave  home,  why  not  go  further,  wherever  wages  may  be 
highest,  and  stay  until  we  have  earned  what  we  need." 
So  the  father  goes  himself  to  America,  or  sends  his  son, 
to  get  money  to  redeem  or  to  enlarge  the  farm. 

The  money  for  the  passage  seems  very  frequently  to  Passage 
be  borrowed;  if  from  neighbors,  then  without  any  guar-  money 
antee  and  without  interest.  A  Jew  takes  from  6  to  10 
per  cent.f  Here,  as  among  the  Slovaks,  we  wrere  told 
that  a  peasant  can  always  get  credit,  and  never  fails  to 
pay;  if  he  is  actually  unable  to  do  so,  his  brother  assumes 
the  debt.  He  almost  never  sells  his  land  (unless  going 
definitely  as  a  colonist),  though  he  may  raise  money  by 
selling  a  cow  or  a  couple  of  ,pigs  or  what  not.  Some 
times  the  land  is  leased  to  a  neighbor,  the  rent  being 
received  beforehand  at  the  rate  of  seven  or  eight 
gulden  a  yoke,  or  about  $2.00  an  acre.  It  is  less  and 
less  customary  to  resort  to  the  Jewish  lenders  for  a 
loan,  especially  in  western  Galicia,  where  the  peasants 
are  more  prudent;  but  even  among  the  Ruthenians 
money  is  now  more  often  borrowed  from  credit  establish 
ments. 

The  reasons  why  farming  in   America   is   or  is  not   Ruthenians 
attractive    to    the    immigrant    are    discussed    at    some  Pv^ada 
length  in  Chapter  XV.     It  is  of  interest  to  find  that  among  to  farm 
Ruthenian  emigrants,  those  who  wish  to  acquire  land 
in  America  and  settle  are  apt  to  go,  not  to  the  United 

*  The  number  of  these  so-called  Sachsenganger,  mostly  un 
married  girls  and.  young  men,  was  estimated  for  1900  at  70,000 
from  Galicia  alone.  See  Buzek:  "Das  Auswanderungs- Prob 
lem,"  page  483. 

fCf.  the  very  similar  account  of  Bulgarian  conditions  in 
Miss  Grace  Abbott's  article,  "The  Bulgarians  of  Chicago." 
Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  653-660  (Jan.,  1909). 


140 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Women  im 
migrants 


The  drink 
traffic 


States,  but  to  Canada,  where  they  can  more  easily  get  a 
farm.  The  Bukowina  has  also  sent  out  large  numbers 
of  Ruthenian  emigrants,  but  the  great  bulk  of  them 
(up  to  1905  at  least)  were  going  to  Canada,  and  conse 
quently  did  not  directly  concern  the  United  States.  In 
Canada  the  Ruthenians  are  said  to  succeed  better 
than  any  other  nationality,  and  in  losing  those  of  this 
group  who  go  out  to  take  up  farms,  we  are  losing  a  set  of 
people  sturdy  and  gifted,  although  backward  in  culture.* 

A  large  number  of  both  Polish  and  Ruthenian  immi 
grants  are  entered  in  our  immigration  tables  as  servants, 
and  these  are  doubtless  mainly  women. t  Of  late,  I 
was  told,  many  peasant  girls  go  to  America  to  earn 
money.  Very  often  a  girl  goes  over  while  her  intended 
is  serving  his  three  years  in  the  army,  and  earns  enough 
to  prepay  his  passage.  This  is  in  all  cases  regarded  as 
a  debt,  and  he  always  repays  the  money  to  her.  There 
is  no  common  property  between  them  till  after  marriage. 
I  was  told  of  forty  girls  who  had  recently  gone  to  Chicago 
to  do  embroidery,  which  they  had  learned  in  Cracow, 
and  of  some  who  were  "coffee  cooks"  in  hotels. 

Besides  the  excessive  subdivision  of  land,  contributory 
causes  of  emigration  are. doubtless  usury  and  debt,'  "taxes 
and  intemperance,  all  largely  interrelated  and  all  in 
timately  connected  with  the  economic  role  of  the  Jew. 
Even  more  than  among  the  Slovaks,  one  meets  here 
bitter  complaints  of  Jews,  both  as  usurers  and  as  pub 
licans.  Here  the  old  feudal  rule  which  gave  the  landlords 
the  monopoly  of  the  drink  traffic  has  lasted,  at  least  as 
regards  retail  sale,  till  now,  and  the  usual  lessees  of  this 
monopoly  (called  in  Polish  propinacja,  in  German  propin- 
ationsrecht) ,  are  Jews.  By  a  recent  law  this  monopoly 
expires  in  1910,  and  then,  it  is  said,  the  United  States  may 
expect  to  receive  some  ten  thousand  Jewish  liquor 

*  See  page  268. 

f  Taking  together  the  three  years  1905,  1906  and  1907,  we 
find  that  of  Polish  immigrants  29  per  cent  were  women  and 
girls  and  16  per  cent  servants;  of  Ruthenian  immigrants  24 
per  cent  were  women  and  girls  and  1 7  per  cent  servants. 


GALICIAN  TYPES 

1  and  2.  Galician  Polish  girls.     3  and  4.  Gorale,  Polish  mountaineers  of  the  Tatra. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  141 

dealers,  no  longer  able  to  sell  drink  at  home.  Sincerely 
as  one  must  admire  the  fine  qualities  of  the  Jews,  this 
can  hardly  seem  a  bright  prospect. 

"being,  as  we  have  shown,  al-  Illiteracy  _ 


most  wholly  small  peasants  with  very  little  land,  it  is  and  growing 

_,,-      intelligence 
not    surprising    to    find    them    largely    illiti  |t||0i     nil  I 

immigration  figures  for  1900  make  the  Ruthenians, 
with  49  per  cent  illiterate,  the  lowest  among  the  Slavic 
groups,  though  better  than  Southern  Italians,  Syrians  or 
Portuguese.  Poles  (from  Germany,  Russia  and  Austria 
together)  make  a  considerably  better  showing  with  only 
31.6  per  cent  illiterate.* 

In^(^1icfa~*~6ne  hears  much  complaint  of  the  lack  of 
schools,  which  are  said  to  be  even  scarcer,  relative  to  the 
population,  in  the  western  part  of  the  province  than  in 
the  eastern.  The  peasants  often  combine  independently 
and  hire  a  teacher  for  themselves  for  the  winter,  to  teach 
men,  women  and  children  alike.  In  places  where  this 
is  done,  almost  every  one  can  read  and  write.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  a  place  near  Gorlice,  the  doctor  told  us 
that  in  his  district  there  were  only  nine  schools  among 
thirty  villages,  and  that  these  schools  were  so  bad  that 
he  did  not  think  a  quarter  of  the  scholars  learned  even 
to  read.  Sometimes  if  a  teacher  complains  of  truancy 
he  is  boycotted,  sometimes  he  is  placated  with  little 
bribes  of  eggs  and  so  forth. 

But  conditions  are  improving,  as  is  shown  by  the 
Austrian  census  figures  of  1900.  Among  the  Poles, 
while  nearly  40  per  cent  of  the  older  men,  those  from 
thirty  to  fifty  years  old,  could  neither  read  nor  write, 
among  lads  of  from  ten  to  twenty  the  figure  sank 
below  27  per  cent.  Among  Ruthenians  the  improve 
ment  was  much  greater,  illiteracy  declining  from  nearly 
80  per  cent  to  under  37  per  cent. 

Intelligence  is  growing  also;  there  is  more  idea  of  the 
world  and  more  desire  for  education  for  the  children, 
especially  in  western  Galicia,  which  forebodes  that  emi- 

*  For  further  comparisons  see  Appendix  XXVII,  page  479. 


142 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


The  stand 
ard  of  livin< 


A  brighter 
picture 


gration  will  go  on  increasing,  and  it  seems  to  be  the 
general  opinion  that  it  will  increase  extensively. 

All  that  has  been  said  of  the  condition  of  Galicia 
connotes  necessarily  a  low  standard  of  comfort.  Of 
course  the  conditions  of  life  among  the  peasants  differ 
from  place  to  place,  and  vary,  as  they  do  everywhere 
else,  according  to  the  character  of  individuals.  From 
what  I  have  heard,  however,  as  well  as  from  what  I  saw, 
I  should  say  that  in  general  things  were  even  poorer  in 
Galicia  than  among  the  Slovaks.  I  recall  the  establish 
ment  of  a  peasant  family  near  Lemberg,  better  off  than 
many,  with  a  whole  series  of  small  farm  buildings 
besides  the  dwelling  house, — granary,  barn,  wattled 
bin  for  Indian  corn,  cow  stall  and  so  forth,  grouped 
about  the  yard.  The  old  peasant  mother,  and  what 
we  saw  of  her  housekeeping,  would  have  done  no 
credit  to  any  slum,  and  the  farm  maid  slept  in  a  little, 
dark,  filthy  cow-house,  where  there  was  no  trace  of  any 
regard  for  health  or  comfort,  unless  a  hole  for  shoveling 
out  manure  on  to  the  heap  outside  could  be  called  that. 
One  gets  a  vivid  picture  of  the  life  of  such  a  maid  in 
Miss  Dowie's  book,  already  referred  to. 

As  I  paint  this  dark  picture  I  think  of  another  village, 
a  Ruthenian  one,  where  the  friendly  and  intelligent 
priest  took  us  to  call  in  one  peasant  home  after  another. 
The  houses  were  close  together,  in  an  irregular  settle 
ment,  and  the  visitor  had  to  pick  his  steps  amid  pools 
and  barnyard  compost  heaps  to  pass  from  one  to 
another.  But  in  spite  of  primitive  conditions,  we  saw 
wholesome,  friendly,  attractive  family  scenes.  The  way 
in  which  the  priest's  hand  was  kissed  as  he  came  in  had 
far  more  of  friendly  feeling  than  of  formal  respect,  and 
girls,  interrupted  in  the  midst  of  a  Sunday  toilette  in  the 
single  family  room,  were  neither  abashed  nor  bold,  but 
quietly  and  deftly  finished  the  braiding  of  hair  and  slip 
ping  on  of  outer  garments.  These  were  taken  from  the 
little  chest  which,  as  the  only  place  for  keeping  personal 
articles  where  closets,  wardrobes,  bureaus,  drawers, 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  143 

shelves  and  hooks  are  alike  wanting,  is  an  important 
piece  of  furniture.  The  rooms  were  low  and  white 
washed;  the  main  objects  were  always  the  same, — a  big 
earthenware  stove,  beds,  and  possibly  a  bench  along  the 
wall.  Perhaps  a  baby's  cradle  might  be  added. 

Many  of  the  people  had  been  to  America,  and  the  Immi- 
con versa tion  would  at  once  turn  to  that  theme.  Some 
would  pass  from  talking  Ruthenian  with  the  priest  to 
talking  immigrant's  English  with  us.  As  they  did  so, 
a  change  of  mood,  of  face,  of  manner  seemed  to  come  with 
the  change  of  speech.  They  appeared  coarser,  commoner, 
less  attractive.  This  was  not  the  first  nor  the  last  time 
that  I  have  noticed  this,  and  it  is  puzzling  and  painful.  L- 
An  element  in  my  impression  was  doubtless  ignorance 
of  their  language,  which  screened  me  from  rough  expres 
sions  and  with  this  may  have  gone  the  glamour  of  what  is 
strange  to  one  and  possibly  somewhat  idealized.  But 
that  is  certainly  not  all.  I  have  talked  with  a  great  many 
of  these  returned  emigrants,  and  whether  in  Croatia, 
Carniola,  Hungary,  Galicia  or  Bohemia,  they  use,  even 
the  educated  among  them,  the  same  singularly  dis 
agreeable  lingo — an  English  that  is  not  so  much  broken 
as  vulgarized.  It  may  be  that  the  Slavic  accent  in 
English  happens  to  be  disagreeable  to  me,  just  as  Italian 
French  is  specially  unpleasing  to  the  French  ear.  But  I 
do  not  think  this  is  the  case.  Had  not  Modjeska's 
English  a  peculiar  charm? 

It  is,  I  believe,  a  social  effect,  a  result  of  being  brought  American 
into  contact  in  America  with  the  roughest  elements  of  an 
industrial  civilization,  and  under  conditions  which  mean 
being  ordered  about,  speeded  up  to  match  the  unwonted 
American  pace,  and  cursed  at  for  not  understanding  direc 
tions.  Swearing  is  an  integral  part  of  English  as  they 
learn  it,  and  not  all  are  conscious  of  it — as  was  one  re 
turned  Croatian  laborer  who  was  to  be  dragged  up  to 
speak  to  us  because  he  knew  English,  but  who  refused 
the  interview  because  he  "did  not  know  how  to  talk 
in  English  to  ladies."  Furthermore,  their  old  peasant 


144 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Returned 
emigrants 
purchase 
land 


courtesy  is  out  of  relation  with  conditions  in  America. 
It  implies  a  deference  which  is  not  expected  and  would 
not  be  understood,  but  they,  losing  this,  learn  nothing  to 
put  in  its  place. 

Sometimes  immigrants  are  themselves  regretfully  con 
scious  of  how  little  opportunity  they  have  to  hear  good 
English,  learning  it,  as  they  do,  mainly  from  those  who 
know  it  only  a  little  better  than  they  themselves  do. 
One  little  Ruthenian  woman  apologized  for  her  poor 
English,  and  told  us  "most  people  do  not  speak  it  right; 
the  people  that  speak  English  best  are  the  colored  people." 
A  colored  woman,  she  told  us,  had  taught  her  to  use  the 
sewing  machine.  She  evidently  not  only  liked  negroes, 
but  regarded  them  with  special  social  respect ;  and  while 
this  absence  of  the  prevailing  and  contagious  deprecia 
tion  of  them  was  refreshing,  it  spoke  volumes  as  to  the 
social  standing  and  opportunities  open  to  an  immigrant. 
This  same  woman  was  about  to  rejoin  her  husband 
and  keep  boarders  for  him  at  Duquesne,  near  Pitts 
burgh,  and  invited  me  to  visit  her  there.  If  I  would 
come,  I  should  have  anything  that  I  liked  to  drink; 
whiskey,  rum  or — with  a  hasty  remembrance  of  Amer 
ican  prejudices — ginger  beer! 

An  interesting  result  of  the  emigration  to  America, 
and  this  not  alone  in  Galicia,  is,  as  has  already  been 
said,  the  breaking  up  of  large  estates.  The  large 
landowner  finds  times  very  unfavorable,  and  as  land 
comes  into  the  market  it  is  apt  to  be  cut  up  and  sold  in 
small  lots.  In  Galicia  50,000  to  90,000  acres  are  "par- 
celliert "  in  this  way  annually,  and  often  the  money  for  the 
purchase  comes  from  America.  Interesting  instances  of 
this  process  were  related  to  us  among  the  Ruthenians  in 
Hungary.  In  one  case  an  estate  of  some  700  acres  was 
for  sale.  A  hundred  or  so  peasants  acting  together 
bought  this  for  $40,000.  In  another  case  where  some 
$64,000  was  to  be  paid,  a  lawyer  offered  to  procure  the 
money  for  them  on  easy  terms,  but  they  said,  "Oh,  no, 
we  will  send  to  America  for  it,"  and  they  did  so.  They 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  145 

paid  $24,000  down,  and  $40,000  more  was  sent  in  the 
course  of  two  years  from  America  to  complete  the  pay 
ment.  To  show  how  values  have  risen — this  land  in 
Hungary  which  sold  for  $64,000,  was  perhaps  a  fifth  part 
of  an  estate  which  was  sold  about  1870  for  something 
over  $8000. 

A  curious  by-result  of  Galician  emigration  is  an  in-   Reemigra- 

creased  demand  for  American  agricultural  machinery.   t.lon  a.      l  .* 

*•—— nuLjtMi  •  in  rim- —    "*     '"*  •*•»»***'"***"•''•'  *  /iincriCciri 

"McCormick,  for  instance,"  said  my  informant,  the  exports 
secretary  of  an  important  Chamber  of  Commerce,  "  owes 
his  Galician  market  to  the  fact  that  there  are  workers 
here  who  understand  how  to  use  his  machinery." 
This  is  only  one  instance  of  what  must  be  in  the  aggregate 
a  considerable  demand  for  American  goods  in  districts 
in  which  returned  emigrants  spread  their  use  directly 
or  indirectly. 

One  hears  interesting  accounts  of  the  return  of  emi 
grants.  In  some  places  they  say  that  the  friends  of  a 
man  who  comes  back  meet  him  outside  the  village  and 
bring  him  his  home  clothes  to  put  on,  that  he  may  not 
be  embarrassed  by  having  to  appear  in  strange  Ameri 
can  dress.  In  other  places — among  the  Slovaks — I  was 
told  that  an  ''American"  would  come  to  church  for  a 
few  Sundays  in  his  Yankee  clothes,  but  in  the  village 
there  would  be  no  one  to  "do  up"  his  starched  shirt  for 
him,  and  he  would  soon  go  back  to  the  old  village  dress. 

The  transition  either  to  the  new  life  or  back  to  Transition 
the  old  is  made,  on  the  whole,  with  surprising  ease.  not  dlfficult 
I  actually  did  visit  afterward  in  Duquesne,  the  Ruthe- 
nian  woman  who  had  offered  me  her  hospitality.  I 
found  her  established,  without  boarders,  in  fairly  pleas 
ant  and  quite  well-furnished  rooms.  She  was  doing 
some  washing  in  a  clean  kitchen  where  the  little  girl 
(who  happened  to  be  sick  with  scarlet  fever)  sat  in  a 
rocking-chair  by  the  resplendent  stove  with  its  nickel 
trimmings.  Upstairs  were  irreproachably  made  beds, 
and  from  bureau  drawers  she  took  a  few  little  treasures 
from  home,  hand-woven  cloth  and  kerchiefs,  to  show  me. 


146 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


What  re 
places  the 
old 
pleasures  ? 


The  dance 


Outside,  the  whole  air  was  full  of  rust-colored  smoke 
from  the  great  steel  works  opposite,  where  her  husband 
worked.  Nearby  stood  a  new  and  very  ornate  Ruthe- 
nian  Church. 

In  spite  of  sunny  rooms  and  American  plenty,  she 
regretted  the  change.  Perhaps  it  is  only  superficially 
that  the  transition  appears  easy.  As  I  have  already  said, 
I  think  the  women  accustom  themselves  to  America 
with  more  difficulty  than  the  men.  For  one  thing  per 
haps  they  miss  the  old  customs,  pretty  or  grotesque, 
which  can  be  only  imperfectly  kept  up  in  the  new  coun 
try.  At  home,  there  are  all  the  traditional  observances 
at  Easter  and  Christmas  and  midsummer  and  harvest 
home,  at  christenings  and  weddings.  But  here  the  old- 
world  festivity  of  the  wedding,  with  its  prolonged  danc 
ing  and  drinking,  and  all  its  quaint  symbolic  incidents,* 
is  too  apt  to  become,  in  American  eyes  at  least,  a  drunken 
row,  and  to  end  in  fines  and  disgrace,  if  not  in  the  lock 
up. 

Like  all  Slavs,  both  Poles  and  Ruthenians  love  danc 
ing,  and  perhaps  one  of  the  best  things  that  could  be 
done  for  them  in  this  country  would  be  to  help  them  to 
have  decent  and  attractive  gathering  places  where  they 
could  enjoy  themselves  without  recourse  to  more  or 
less  dubious  dance  halls.  At  home  they  dance  a  great 
deal  out  of  doors  and  one  of  the  most  picturesque  sights 

*  The  Countess  Franfoise  Kransinska,  in  her  charming  jour 
nal,  writing  of  the  wedding  of  her  sister  Basia  in  1759,  speaks 
of  the  cap  ceremony,  which  still  takes  place  at  Polish  weddings 
in  America.  "At  midnight  the  music  stopped,  and  the  cap 
ceremony  was  begun.  A  stool  was  placed  in  the  middle  of  the 
room,  the  bride  sat  down,  and  the  bridesmaids  began  to  undo 
her  hair,  singing  in  plaintive  voices  the  old  song,  Ah,  we  are 
losing  you,  Basia.  Then  my  honored  mother  removed  the 
rosemary  wreath  and  the  Woivodine  Malachowska  put  in  its 

place  a  big  lace  cap The  cap  is  very  becoming  to 

her,  which  they  say  is  a  sign  that  her  husband  will  love  her 
very  much." 

Another  curious  custom  which  survives  among  Poles  in 
this  country  takes  place  on  Holy  Thursday,  when  the  boys  chase 
the  girls  with  little  rods,  and  try  to  strike  them.  The  girls 
retaliate  by  trying  to  throw  water  on  the  boys.  This  is  said  to 
be  a  corruption  of  a  memorial  of  the  scourging  in  the  Passion. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    GALICIA  147 

of  my  Austrian  journey  was  one  such  Sunday  afternoon 
dance  on  the  green  in  a  Ruthenian  village.  The  matrons 
of  the  place  sat  on  the  grass,  or  on  the  steps  of  an  old 
covered  well,  and  held  the  girls'  sheepskin  jackets  be 
tween  the  dances,  or  supplied  them  with  a  refuge  in 
case  of  embarrassment.  Sometimes  the  boys  and  girls 
danced  in  whirling  couples,  like  our  waltzers,  to  the  fast 
and  furious  music  of  players  who  stood  almost  hidden  in 
the  thick  of  the  dancing  crowd.  Sometimes  the  boys 
danced  by  themselves  in  a  ring,  with  arms  outstretched 
and  hands  on  one  another's  shoulders.  They  wore 
long  white  linen  shirts  or  tunics  almost  to  their  knees, 
bound  about  the  waist  with  bright  woven  girdles; 
and  long,  rather  wide  white  linen  trousers.  The  girls, 
who  were  very  pretty,  wore  their  hair  curiously  braided 
from  the  temple  to  the  nape  of  the  neck,  with  flowers, 
dahlias  and  so  on,  plastered  on  behind.  Their  sheepskin 
jackets,  with  the  wool  inside,  were  embroidered,  and  so 
were  the  loose  straight  sleeves  of  their  linen  blouses. 
Their  skirts,  straight  and  close,  were  made  by  winding 
a  strip  of  rough  dark  cloth  tightly  about  their  hips. 
But  most  striking  were  the  adornments — the  peacock's 
feather  tips  and  the  bands  of  bright  bead  work,  (favors 
from  their  fair  ones),  which  ornamented  the  boys'  hats, 
and  the  beads  and  strings  of  coins  round  the  necks  of 
the  girls.  These  were  doubtless  heirlooms  and  indeed 
one  belle  who  showed  us  her  necklace  had  a  coin  with 
the  head  of  Maria  Theresa  on  it. 

Another  Sunday  afternoon,  driving  around  a  bend  in 
the  road,  we  came  upon  a  group  of  three  or  four  young 
boys  and  girls  dancing  to  the  music  of  a  fiddle.  They 
had  left  the  cattle  that  they  were  tending,  in  order  to 
enjoy  themselves  just  as  the  older  lads  and  lasses  were 
doubtless  doing  in  the  village  behind  us.  One  boy 
brought  us  a  cap  full  of  milky  filberts,  and  as  we  drove 
off  into  the  gathering  dusk  we  felt  that  we  too  had  been 
in  Arcadia. 

y 


CHAPTER  VIII 


"  Kramers, 
or  Slove 
nians 


Their  place 
in  history 


Conflict 
with 
German 
influences 


THE  SLOVENIANS 

"What  kind  of  people  are  these  Griners?"  I  was  asked 
in  Cleveland,  and  it  did  not  at  first  occur  to  me  that  the 
unknown  word  must  be  a  corruption  of  Krainer,  which 
is  what  the  Germans  call  the  people  of  Krain — or,  as 
we  say  in  English,  Carniola.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
term  is  often  used  for  those  not  only  from  Carniola, 
but  from  Carinthia  and  other  neighboring  territory,  and 
indeed  for  the  whole  nationality  to  which  they  belong, 
the  Slovenes  or  Slovenians.* 

They  are  a  South  Slav  group,  close  cousins  jQJLJthe 
Croatians^but  with  a  dirTerentT^though  nearly  related, 
language.  Like  the  Bohemians,  they  have  been  brought 
by  their  situation  into  intimate  relation  with  'German 
influences,  and  have  been  Germanized  to  a  considerable 
extent. 

They-seem  to  have  located  in  and  about  their  present 
seats. in  the  Eastern  Alps  in  the  sixth  century,  driven 
before  the  Avars,  and  were  soon  in  conflict  with  their 
Bavarian  neighbors  to  the  west.  The  conversion  of  the 
Slovenes  to  Christianity  by  the  Germans  meant  a  partial 
assimilation  and  absorption  by  them,  the  Slavic  popu 
lation  of  Salzburg  and  the  Tyrol  being  completely  Ger 
manized. 

Charlemagne  divided  the  country  of  the  Slovenes 
into  various  feudal  lordships,  ancl  this  people  has  never 

*  They  call  themselves  Slovinci ;  an  earlier  name  was  Vinds 
or  Wends.  In  the  United  States  the  name  "Austrian"  is  often 
used  specifically,  as  previously  said,  to  mean  Slovenes;  though 
in  some  places  in  Pennsylvania  I  have  found  it  used  to  mean 
Italians  from  the  Austrian  Tyrol.  Information  as  to  the  Slov 
enes,  ethnical  and  historical,  will  be  found  in  Auerbach's 
"Races  et  Nationalites  en  1'Autriche-Hongrie,"  pages  65-80; 
see  also,  for  those  in  Hungary,  pages  298-300. 

148 


THE    SLOVENIANS  149 

known  .a  united  or  an  independent  political  existence. 
That  they  were  not  without  political  instinct  is  indicated 
by  the  story  which  Leger  tells  in  his  "  History  of  Austria- 
Hungary,"  of  a  curious  ancient  custom  among  the  Slo 
venes  of  Carinthia  at  the  installation  of  a  new  prince. 
'The  ceremony  took  place  near  the  town  of  Celovic 
(Klagenf urt) .  A  peasant  mounted  on  a  rock  to  await  the 
coming  of  the  new  prince,  who  advanced,  clothed  in  rustic 
garments.  The  peasant  asked,  'Who  is  this  who  ap 
proaches?'  The  people  answered,  'It  is  the  prince  of 
this  land.'  The  peasant  then  asked,  'Is  he  a  good 
judge?  Is  he  the  friend  of  truth?'  and,  on  receiving  a 
reply  in  the  affirmative,  the  peasant  yielded  his  place 
to  the  new  comer,  who  mounted  the  rock  and,  brandish 
ing  his  sword,  swore  to  defend  the  country  of  the  Slo 
venes.  The  people  who  had  imagined  it  deserved  a 
more  brilliant  destiny."* 

In  spite  of  having  so  little  beyond  a  common  language  Slovenian 
to  give  them  a  sense  of  unity  or  racial  significance,  the  revn 
Slovenes  have  twice  enjoyed  a  nationalistic  revival. 
The  first_was_at_  thejtime^oi _tlae-Reformation,  and  not 
only  aroused  religious  zeal  (nineteen-twentieths  of  the 
population  of  Carinthia  is  said  to  have  become  Protes 
tant),  but  also  caused  a  literary  awakening  of  the 
language,  much  as  the  earlier  Hussite  movement  had 
done  in  Bohemia,  or  as  Wiclif  did  in  England.  At  this 
time  a  considerable  Slovenian  literature  appeared, 
including  a  translation  of  the  Bible,  and  a  grammar. 
The  Counter  Reformation,  however,  brought  about  the 
return  of  Catholicism  and  of  the  literary  dominance  of 
the  German  language. 

The  -next  Slovenian  ..renascence-  came  as  a  result  of  the 
Napxileorri'C  wars,  which  for  a  short  time  joined  most  of 
the  Slovenian  territory,  together  with  Dalmatia  and 
Croatia,  to  France  as  her  so-called  Illyrian  provinces. 
This  led  to  the  "Illyrian  movement"  in  the  thirties, 

*  Leger,  Louis:  "A  History  of  Austria-Hungary  from  the 
Earliest  Time  to  the  Year  1889,"  pages  51,  52. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


A  language 
in  process 


Numbers 

and 

location 


under  the  Slavic  enthusiast  and  author,  Louis  Gaj,  who 
endeavored  to  arouse  national  feeling  among  all  the 
South  Slavs  and  to  inspire  them  with  a  sense  of  their 
unity  and  a  pride  in  their  language. 

Slovenian  has  ever  since  been  cultivated,  but  as  a 
literary  medium  it  seems  to  be  still,  in  some  degree,  in 
the  making.  For  instance,  I  asked  a  Trieste  lady  what 
a  sign  on  a  theatre  door  meant.  She  said  she  could  not 
understand  it.  When  I  asked  her  further,  she  said, 
"Yes,  I  speak  Slovenian,  but  I  learned  it  as  a  child  in 
the  nursery;  I  spent  my  girlhood  away  from  home  and 
was  educated  in  German.  When  I  came  back  our 
language  had  been  changed  so  much  that  I  often  do 
not  know  what  the  words  mean."  The  fact  seems  to  be 
that  the  language  having  been  for  generations  mainly 
an  unwritten  dialect  of  the  plain  people,  words  must 
often  be  borrowed  from  other  Slavic  languages,  formed 
by  analogy,  or  built  up  from  existing  roots.  I  could  not 
help  being  amused  to  see  one  of  the  collaborators  in  this' 
process  himself  reduced  to  asking  a  waiter  to  explain 
to  him  dishes  on  a  Slovenian  menu  card. 

The  folk  literature  is  said  to  be  rich  in  lyrics  and  tales, 
but  among  the  Slovenes  one  does  not  get  the  impres 
sion  of  a  living,  pulsating  national  tradition  as  one  does, 
for  instance,  among  the  Slovaks,  the  Little  Russians,  or 
the  Croatians.  This  may  be  in  part  because  the  na 
tional  costume  has  almost  passed  away.  Certainly  the 
people  appear  much  more  assimilated  to  the  Germans, 
and  so  to  the  general  European  type. 

The  Slovenes  number  probably  in  the  neighborhood 
of  1,500,000  only.  They  are  massed  in  a  fairly  well- 
rounded  region,  but  are  divided  politically  by  ethnically 
irrelevant  boundaries.  The  .great  majority  live  in  Aus 
tria,  where  1,192,780  Slovenian-speaking  persons  were 
counfeoTin  1900,  a  figure  that  the  Slovenians  themselves 
claim  is  too  low.  Across  the  border  in  Croatia  are 
19,875,  and  in  two  neighboring  counties  of  Hungary 


A  SLOVENIAN  GIRL 


THE    SLOVENIANS  151 

are  some  68,000  more.  There  are  also  perhaps  50,000 
in  Italy.*  In  Austria  they  are  found  in  southern  Styria, 
southern  Carinthia,  Carniola,  Goricia-Gradisca,  northern 
Istria  and  in  and  about  Trieste.  Of  these,  nearly  40  per 
cent  are  in  Carniola  where  more  than  nine  out  of  ten  of 
the  population  speak  Slovenian. 

The  Slovenians  are  largely  a  peasant  people,  and  it  is  City  and 
noticeable~Tr6w""oTten ."cities,  even  in  the  midst  of  Sloven-  c 
ian  districts,  are  mainly  German.     For  instance,  in  the 
city  of  Cilli  the  Slovenians  are  only  23  per  cent  (to  the 
Germans'  77),  while  in  the  surrounding  country  district 
they  are  97  per  cent. 

This  relation  of  city  and  country  population  is  a  very 
general  one  in  states  where  Slavs  are  confronted  with 
Germans,  Italians  or  even  Hungarians.  They  may 
flock  as  laborers  to  commercial  and  industrial  centres, 
like  Vienna,  Fiume  or  Budapest,  but  they  are  prepon 
derantly  country  folk.  Laibach,  or  to  call  it  by  its  Slavic 
name,  Ljubljana,  is,  however,  an  example  of  a  city  of 
Slavs.  Of  its  37,000  inhabitants,  more  than  eight  out 
of  ten  speak  Slovenian.  This  beautiful  city,  with  its 
vistas  crowned  by  a  snow-capped  Alpine  range,  is  indeed 
not  only  the  capital  of  Carniola,  but  unofficially  the 
capital  of  the  Slovenian  nationality. 

In  places  where  there  is  a  strong  minority  of  Slovenians,   Racial 
as  in  Trieste,  they  make  vigorous  efforts  to  come  to  the  frictlon 
top,  and  everywhere  that  there  is  contact  with   other 
nationalities   there  is   considerable  friction.     The   Ger 
mans  are  prone  to  carry  things  with  a  high  hand,  the 
Italians  are  equally  ambitious,  and  where  the  Slavs  get 
into  the  saddle  they  are  complained  of  in  turn.f     So 
much  strength  is  dissipated  in  Austria  in  this  national 
jarring. 

*Auerbach,  pages  80   and   299.      The   figures  for    Hungary 
and  Italy  refer  to  1890. 

fCf.  Auerbach,  pages  78,  79. 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Mountains 
and  Karst 


Emigration 
districts 


Emigration 

from 

Carniola 


Most  of  the  country  where  the  Slovenians  live  is  rnoun-' 
tainous,  from  the  very  beautiful  Alps  of  Styria,  Carinthia 
and  upper  Carniola,  to  the  Uskok  mountains  on  the 
Croatian  border  to  the  southeast;  while  to  the  west, 
in  Istria,  stands  Monte  Maggiore,  which  gives  Abbazia 
the-- shelter  that  makes  it  an  all-the-y ear-round  resort  for 
pleasure  and  health. 

Not  only  is  this  Slovenian  district  mountainous,  but 
much  of  it  is  karst  or  limestone  waste.  To  one  who  has 
first  seen  what  this  can  be  in  Croatia  and  along  the 
Dalmatian  coast,  and  worst  of  all  in  Montenegro,  the 
karst  here  seems  a  mild  affair.  Yet  this  limestone  for 
mation  gives  Carniola  its  most  famous  features  in  the 
grottos  of  Adelsberg  and  Saint  Canzian. 

Of  course,  neither  mountains  nor  karst  bode  any  good 
to  agriculture,  and  of  manufacturing  there  is  little  or 
none  in  the  districts  most  affected  by  emigration.  Of 
late  years  a  decline  in  the  iron  industry  of  the  Alpine 
districts  of  Carinthia  and  Styria  has  sent  some  miners  to  • 
America  and  more  to  the  Westphalian  district  of  Ger 
many,  but  so  far  as  I  could  learn  there  is  no  considerable 
movement  to  America  from  Carinthia  or  Styria.  F4QQ.ds^. 
in  _the  narrow  Alpine  valleys  (like  that  of  1903  in  the 
Canal _Thal  of  Carinthia)  and  other  local  causes,  lead  men 
to  ^migrate,  but  these  are  individual  cases  hardly  con 
stituting  an  emigration  movement.  Nor  did  my  inquiries 
on  the  spot  reveal  any  emigration  of  the  Slovenians  from 
Goricia-Gradisca,  though  the  Italians  from  the  malarial 
and  pellagra-smitten  coast  districts  of  the  province  do 
emigrate  to  some  extent. 

It  is  only  from  Carniola  that  there  is  any  noteworthy. 
Slovenian  current  to  America,  and  here  there  is  an  emi 
gration  fever  of  marked  severity.  The  movement  at 
tracted  local  attention  in  1893  (when  it  already  had  a 
few  years'  start)  through  the  remittances  sent  home  by 
emigrants,  and  the  governor  of  Carniola  then  ordered  an 
investigation  through  the  post-office.  The  figures,  con 
tinued  since  this  time,  have  considerable  interest,  espe- 


THE    SLOVENIANS 


153 


cially  as  our  own  immigration  reports  merge  the 
Slovenians  with  the  Croatians;  they  are  given  in 
Appendix  XII,  page  451. 

The  Carniolan  figures  show,  for  the  eleven  and  a  half 
years  represented,  a  fairly  steady  increase,  culminating 
in  T~9o^"wi1^__nver  6 509  jgmigrants.  The  total  for  the 
period  was  over  30,500,  directed  mainly  to  North  Amer 
ica.  ^  Where  not  one  in  fifty  is  a  wroman  it  is  obviously 
not  a  family  movement;  and  that  it  is  r 


witBTthe  idea  ot  permanent  settlement  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  only  145  sold  their  property  while  nearly  6000 
did  not  do  so.  The  study  of  causes  is  interesting.  Out 
of  the  whole  30,561,  only  twenty-seven  cases  are  ascribed 
to  fear  of  military  service,  and  less  than  one  in  sixty 
to  indebtedness,  the  great  majorityr-over  five-sixths, 
going  to  earn  ^^Z^jnci^^y*  _^ 

The  districts  of  Carniola  most  affected  seem  to  be 
Littai  (in  upper  Carniola),  Gottschee  (a  German  dis 
trict),  and  especially  Chernembl,  on  the  Croatian 
boundary,  each  of  which  suffered  the  enormous  net  loss 
by  migration  of  over  1 2  per  cent  of  its  population  in  the 
decade  1890—1900,  a  loss  comparable  to  that  of  the  most 
severely  affected  Slovak  counties.* 

The   Chernembl  district,   which   was  a  wine-growing _  Causes 
country,  with  fine  vineyards,  had  suffered  much  from  the 
phyjloxera.     The  people,  it  is  said,  were  used  to  good 
living,   and   instead   of  retrenching  when  the  blow  fell, 
ran  into  debt  and  finally  had  to  emigrate  in  consequence. 

Some  places  had  depended  in  part  on  local  house- 
industries,  such  as  the  making  of  wooden  wares  and 
pottery,  which  the  people  produced  and  hawked  about. 
This  like  the  Slovak  itinerant  trades,  was  hurt  by  modern 
conditions,  especially  by  regulations  made  in  the  interests 
of  shopkeepers  to  restrict  peddling.  The  decline  of  this 
source  of  income  was  another  cause  of  emigration. 

Three  days  spent  in  driving  through  the  Gottschee  and  Village  life 

*  See  Table  9,  page  104;  also  for  Carniola  as  a  whole,  Table  3, 
page  48. 


154  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

Chernembl  districts  gave  us  a  chance  to  see  the  homes 
of  the  people  and  to  talk  with  local  officials  and 
returned  immigrants.  On  the  whole,  it  seemed  a  fairly 
prosperous  countryside.  My  sharpest  impressions  are 
first,  of  a  village  where  we  waited  to  bait  our  horses,— 
its*  little  pond,  its  comfortable  looking  houses  with 
their  stucco  walls  trellised  with  grapevines,  its  big 
church,  and  the  women  in  long  sleeveless  coats,  (the 
only  bit  of  costume  I  saw  in  Carniola),  hurrying  to 
Mass;  and  then  of  the  flowery  fields,  the  vineyard  slopes 
with  little  storehouses  for  wine  shining  white  on  the 
hillside,  the  figure  of  Saint  Florian  extinguishing  a  con 
flagration  rudely  painted  on  the  houses  and  apparently 
taking  the  place  of  fire  insurance,  and  the  wayside 
shrines  at  which  our  driver  would  interrupt  a  skeptical 
discussion  of  church  doctrines  to  raise  his  hat. 

Returned  At  Gottschee,  German  gymnastic  societies  were  hold 

ing  a  reunion,  to  encourage  the  Germans  of  the  place  to 
hold  out  against  Slovenian  influences,  and  the  village' 
was  consequently  well  filled.  We  were  lucky  to  get  a 
night's  lodging  and  a  chance  to  get  information  from 
the  Burgomaster.  More  interesting  was  a  talk  with  an 
upholsterer  who  had  returned  home  for  good,  after 
having  lived  for  some  time  in  Brooklyn.  "Life  and 
work,"  he  said,  "are  more  gemutlich  here  at  home. 
There  is  eating  and  drinking  in  the  middle  of  the  forenoon 
and  again  in  the  afternoon,  and  not  such  a  sense  of  hurry. 
In  America,  men  are  driven  on  with  cursing" — which 
he  quoted.  "The  millionaires  exploit  the  workers.  A 
man  is  used  up  after  a  few  years,  but  there  is  always  a 
young  and  strong  one  ready  to  take  his  place,  and  they 
say  to  him  '  come  on.' >: 

This  is  almost  the  only  note  of  social  criticism  that 
I  have  heard  among  emigrants.  This  man,  it  must 
be  remembered,  was  a  German  and  from  a  big  city  in 
America.  But  nowhere,  it  seemed  to  me,  did  I  hear  so 
often  as  in  Carniola,  that  men--xetumed  exhausted  or 
injured.  Every  one  seemed  to  be  struck  by  this.  This 


THE    SLOVENIANS  155 

is  probably  because  the  Slovenes  work  in  America  largely 
in  the  most  dangerous  trades,  in  mining  and  iron  works 
especially.  I  think,  however,  that  it  is  largely  the  pace 
that  kills,  as  our  upholsterer  friend  felt.* 

Contrasting  with  his  view  that  America  is  too  stren 
uous,  was  that  of  another  man  returned  after  fourteen 
years  in  Cleveland.  He  stayed  at  home  in  Carniola 
only  some  six  weeks,  though  he  had  come  back  meaning 
to  stay  longer.  He  saw  so  much  poverty  that  he  could 
not  stand  it,  he  said.  He  had  given  away  at  least  five 
hundred  gulden  ($200)  since  his  return  home,  and  was 
afraid  that  he  would  give  away  everything  that  he  had 
if  he  stayed.  In  America  he  owns  houses  and  a  "Gast- 
haus"  (probably  a  saloon),  and  his  wife  takes  lodgers. 
If  he  had  not  left  home,  he  says,  he  would  be  a  beggar 
today.  When  he  first  went  to  America  he  shoveled 
coal  and  his  wife  did  washing,  but  gradually  they  got  on. 

And  the  "Krainers"  in  America  do  get  on.     A  man  Remittances 
in  Mr.  Sakser's  bank  in  New  York  told  me  that  the  firm 
remits  at  least  a  million  dollars  a  year,  mainly  sent  home 
by  Slovenians.     And  this  is  as  near  as  I  can  come  to 
telling  "what  kind  of  people  these  Griners  are."f 

*  I  note  that  Mr.  Devine  puts  first  in  his  statement  of  the  gist 
of  the  situation  in  Pittsburgh,  "An  altogether  incredible  amount 
of  overwork  by  everybody,  reaching  its  extreme  in  the  twelve- 
hour  shift  for  seven  days  in  the  week  in  the  steel  mills  and 
railway  switch-yards."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI. 
page  1035  (Mar.  6,  1909).  See  for  an  account  of  the  physical 
and  nervous  strain  of  the  steel  workers,  ibid.,  pages  1081  ff. 

t  See  chapter  on  The  Household  for  picture  of  Krainer  factory 
girls. 


CHAPTER  IX 


The  South 
Slavs 


The  Croa- 
tians  and 
Servians 


EMIGRATION  FROM  CROATIA 

With  the  Croatians  we  are  in  the  midst  of  the  world  of 
the  South  Slavs.  Of  their  three  branches,  the  Bulgarians 
to  the  east  do  not  come  into  this  study  of  emigration 
from  Austria-Hungary;  the  Slovenians  to  the  west  we 
have  just  considered,  and  the  most  numerous  group, 
the  Servo-Croatians,  which  lies  between,  must  now  be 
taken  up. 

In  blood  and  speech  the  Croatians  and  Servians,  as 
already  explained,  are  .-.one ;  beliefs  a^nd.p.olitics., divide 
them.  The  poetry,  legends,  and  customs,  of  which  they 
have  so  rich  and  important  a  treasure,  are  the  same  among 
both  peoples,  or  at  least  shade  into  one  another.  As  a ' 
race  they  strike  the  observer  as  darker,  more  graceful 
and  more  gracious  than  their  northern  kinsmen,  though 
fundamentally  similar,  and  their  language  seems  more 
liquid  and  southern  in  character. 

As  the_kingdpm..of -Servm  is  the  chief  home  and  political 
cynosure  of  the  Servians,  that  is,  of  the^rthqdqxj)ranch 
of  the  Servo-Croatian  stem,  so  the  kingdom  of  Croatia- 
Slavonia,  commonly  for  convenience  called  Croatia 
simply,  is  the  centre  for  the  Croatian  or  Roman  Catholic 
branch.  In  each  case  outside  the  political  Boundaries 
are  others  of  the  same  blood  and  faith — Servians,  notably, 
in  Montenegro,  in  Novi  Bazar  across  the  frontier  in  Tur 
key,  and  in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina ;  Croatians  along  the 
Adriatic  coast  in  Dalmatia,  where  they  make  up  most  of 
the  population,  in  Istria,  and  in  smaller  groups  else 
where.  Croatia-Slavonia  itself  with  a  population  of 
nearly  2,500,000  and  an  area  equal  to  not  quite  one- 
third  of  the  state  of  New  York,  is  a  fairly  homogeneous 
country — markedly  homogeneous  indeed  for  Austria- 

156 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  157 

Hungary.  Eighty-seven  per  cent  of  the  population 
speak  "  Servian  or  Croatian  "  and  71  per  cent  are  Roman 
Catholic.* 

Politically,  Croatia-^la^Qida  is  a  so-called  "autonomous  The  autono- 
kingdom"  boui^_jtojjhmgary,  much  as  Hungary  is  bound 
to  Austria,  by  old  dynastic  ties  and  by  a  modern  political 
contract  which  fixes  the  constitutional  relations  of  the 
two  states.  Croatia  is  of  course  the  weaker  party  and 
complains  bitterly  of  the  illegal  and  overbearing  policy 
of  Hungary  and  of  her  financial  exploitation.  For 
instance,  though  Agram  lies  midway  between  Budapest 
and  the  port  of  Fiume,  the  railroad,  which  is  Hungarian, 
charges  more  for  freight  sent  to  Fiume  from  Agram  than 
from  Budapest.  Croatian  firms  are  obliged  to  do  business 
under  Magyar  names  and  to  make  their  headquarters 
in  inland  Budapest.  Nevertheless,  Croatia  with  local 
self  government  and  especially  with  education  in  her 
own  control  is  infinitely  better  off  than  the  non-Magyar 
nationalities  in  Hungary  proper. 

Quite  apart  from  unfair  treatment  at  the  hands  of  Hard 
Hungary,  Croatian  conditions  have  been  hard  enough.  Conditions 
"The  Croatians  look  as  if  they  were  dying  of  consump 
tion,  but  they  are  tougher  than  wire,"  said  a  doctor  of 
the  immigration  service,  out  of  his  years  of  experience, 
and  the  Croatian  has  had  to  face  conditions  which  re 
quired  him  to  be  tough.  For  the  most  part  he  has  had 
a  hard  struggle  against  both  nature  and  man.  The 
counties  to  the  east,  which  constitute  Slavonia,  are  rich 
and  under-populated,  but  toward  the  west  there  are  often 
more  people  than  the  country  under  present  conditions 
is  fitted  to  support,  f  Along  the  Adriatic  -coast  and 
for  some  distance  inland,  including  Lika-Krbaya  county, 

*  For  the  rest,  3  per  cent  of  the  population  speak  other  Slavic 
languages,  3.7  per  cent  Magyar,  and  5.6  per  cent  German;  in 
religion  25.5  per  cent  are  Orthodox,  5  per  cent  Greek  Catholic, 
1.8  per  cent  Protestant  and  8  per  cent  Israelite. 

t  In  this  largely  sterile  country,  dependent  on  a  backward 
agriculture,  the  density  exceeds  that  of  Pennsylvania  or  New 
York  state,  and  is  nearly  equal  to  that  of  little  "industrial  Con 
necticut. 


158  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

the  land  is  rugged  where  not  actually  mountainous,  and 
largely  sterile.  Much  of  it  is  indeed  sheer  karst  or  lime 
stone  desert,  about  as  pleasant  to  try  to  cultivate  as  a 
piece  of  bare  coral.  To  understand  what  it  means  one 
must  drive,  day  after  day,  through  this  country.  Even 
a  New  Englander,  used  to  fields  where  "the  sheep's 
noses  have  to  be  sharpened  so  that  they  can  graze  be 
tween  the  stones,"  is  appalled  at  what  is  here  called 
pasture.  Great  stretches  lie  almost  bare  of  any  green 
thing,  a  mere  exposure  of  broken  rock  surfaces. 

In  many  places  there  are  depressions  in  the  stony 
ground,  into  which  soil  washes,  and  one  sees  such  spots, 
perhaps  fifteen  feet  across,  walled  around  and  carefully 
cultivated.  These  dolinas,  as  they  are  called,  are  char 
acteristic  of  this  limestone  region.  I  counted,  I  think, 
forty  on  one  scrubby  hillside.  The  limestone  formation 
also  accounts  for  the  wildly  romantic  character  of  some 
of  the  landscapes  in  Croatia  and  adjacent  territory; 
crags,  caverns,  intermittent  waterfalls,  rivers  that  sink' 
into  the  earth  to  emerge  miles  away,  or  perhaps  never 
more  to  be  seen,  and  at  other  places  streams  that  sud 
denly  flow  forth  full-grown  rivers.* 

Climate  In  the  mountainous  parts  the  famous  B  ora ,  the  dreaded 

north  wind  of  the  eastern  Adriatic  shore,  is  very 
destructive,  and  the  winters  are  long  and  severe.  "It 
is  a  whole  fur  coat  colder  here,"  said  our  driver  as  we 
drove  into  an  attractive  valley  where  a  peasant  who  ha'd 
been  (as  we  were  told)  in  Missouri,  in  Wyoming  and 
in  Colorado,  was  doing  his  spring  ploughing.  Here 
the  soil  was  good  enough,  but  the  climate  was  too  rigor 
ous  for  much  to  grow.  Another  day  our  driver  mentioned 
as  if  it  were  nothing  very  extraordinary,  being  once 
snowed  up  for  twenty  days  at  the  inn  where  we  were 
lunching.  But  if  the  winters  are  cold,  the  summer  sun 
of  Italy  blazing  on  these  whitish  rocks  is  scorching 
hot. 

*The  most  noted  natural  beauty  of  Croatia  proper  is  the 
lovely  group  of  the  Plitvica  lakes. 


KARST  COUNTRY  IN  CARNIOLA  AND  CROATIA 

1.  Birth  of  a  river  from  underground.  2.  A  sink  hole,  "  dolina,"  in  the  Karst;  a  little 
deposit  of  soil  worth  cultivating  though  so  small.  3.  Laibach,  capital  of  Carniola.  4.  The 
grotto  of  Saint  Canzian  in  Carniola.  5.  An  island  shore  of  bare  Karst. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  159 

This  Lika  district  of  Croatia  was  one  of  the  few  places 
where  a  local  type  seemed  to  be  distinguishable.  One 
of  the  common  features  of  the  tall  and  worn  looking 
men,  with  their  thin,  serious  faces,  was  a  set  of  curious 
horizontal  wrinkles  across  their  foreheads,  which  may 
have  meant  sun  dazzle  and  may  have  meant  care. 
The  lined  face,  together  with  the  "mutton  chop  "  whiskers 
that  he  wears,  give  the  Lika  peasant  as  he  ploughs  his 
stony  field  a  strange,  irrelevant  likeness  to  a  British  man 
of  business. 

As  if  his  natural  difficulties  were  not  enough,  the 
Croatian,  especially  the  Croatian  of  the  southern  border, 
has  had  to  face  a  constant  struggle  with  the  Turk.  Turk 
Till  1878  the  neighboring  territory,  Bosnia,  was  Turkish, 
and  men  still  living  remember  the  bloody  fighting  on  the 
Cordon.  One  occasionally  gets  a  vivid  suggestion  of 
what  it  meant.  In  a  Croatian  valley,  cultivated  from 
side  to  side,  but  without  a  house  among  the  fields,  we 
noticed  that  the  dwellings  were  all  at  the  edge  of  the 
slopes.  "Is  the  valley  subject  to  floods?"  I  asked, 
wondering.  "Oh,  no,"  was  the  reply,  "but  it  was 
necessary  to  be  able  to  take  refuge  quickly  in  the  woods 
and  mountains  in  case  of  a  raid." 

Here  and  there  one  sees  on  a  hill  a  castle  or  fortress 
built  for  refugees  (Uskoks)  and  one  hears  that  this  or 
that  district  has  inhabitants  who  by  their  dialect  are 
still  distinguishable  as  descendants  of  unfortunates  who 
formerly  fled  thither  to  escape  the  Turks.  Evans,  in 
his  most  interesting  book  on  Bosnia,  has  a  photograph 
of  a  group  of  such  who  had  taken  refuge  in  Ragusa  on 
the  Dalmatian  coast. 

If  a  hard  outdoor  life  and  constant  border  warfare  Military 
toughened  the  Croatian,  there  went  with  these  condi-  organization 
tions  certain  institutions  which  in  some  degree  tended  to 
unfit  him  for  independent  life  in  a  system  of  individual 
competition.     The  first  of  these  institutions  was  that  of 
the  "Militar  Grenze."     This  dates  back  as  far  as  1564, 
when  to  protect  the  border  from  the  Turks  a  strip  of 


l6o  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

land  along  its  edge  was  organized  into  the  Military  Con 
fines  or  Military  Frontier.  After  a  period  of  subjection  to 
the  Turks  this  military  organization  was  renewed.  In 
1739  the  part  of  the  country  not  under  this  organization, 
"Civil  Croatia,"  comprised  only  the  Zeng,  Fiume  and 
Modrus  districts.*  All  the  rest  was  divided  into  so-called 
regiments,  its  population  being  placed  on  a  purely  military 
footing,  under  military  command.  All  men  of  military 
age,  that  is  up  to  sixty,  were  soldiers.  Though  living 
like  peasants  they  were  in  the  emperor's  service,  with  a 
regular  position  in  the  army,  subject  to  active  duty  for 
a  part  of  every  year,  and  liable  to  be  called  to  the  colors 
at  any  time.  These  Croatian  regiments,  the  Likaner 
and  others,  were  not  only  made  use  of  in  local  war 
fare,  but  were  apt  to  be  sent  to  the  front  in  the  dis 
tant  wars  in  which  the  Austrians  have  been  constantly 
engaged. 

Effects  of  Indeed,  the  man  of  the  frontier,  up  to  forty  or  fifty 

conditions  years  a£°>  was  more  used  to  fighting  than  to  labor  and 
could  not  go  to  his  ploughing  without  his  weapons. 
As  is  usual  under  such  circumstances,  work  was  then 
largely  left  to  the  women,  as  it  is  today  in  Montenegro 
where  war  and  hunting  still  rank,  in  true  barbarian 
fashion,  as  the  suitable  occupations  for  a  man.  On 
this  account,  it  is  said,  many  Croatians  have  never  ac 
quired  habits  of  steady  industry,  using  their  great 
strength  energetically  for  a  few  days  perhaps,  and  then 
idling.  Not  only  was  work  thus  interfered  with  by  this 
military  life,  but  the  natural  responsibility  for  self-sup 
port  was  partly  lifted  by  it  from  the  shoulders  of  the 
population.  As  soldiers  they  were  necessary  and  must 
be  maintained,  and  their  support  was  eked  out  with  im 
perial  rations  and  with  help  in  bad  seasons. 

It  was  not  till  1869  that  it  was  decided  to  do  away  with 

*  ' '  Die  KGnigreiche  Kroatien  und  Slavonien  auf  der  Milen- 
niums-Aufstellung  des  Konigreichs  Ungarn  in  Budapest,  1896." 
Kgl.  Landesdruckerei ;  Agram,  1896.  Historical  Sketch,  pages 
227-235. 


EMIGRATION  FROM  CROATIA  l6l 

the  military  frontier,  gradually  abolish  the  exceptional 
conditions  and  restore  the  inhabitants  to  civil  life,  and 
it  was  not  till  August  i,  1881,  that  the  military  admin 
istration  was  definitively  replaced  by  a  system  of  civil 
government. 

The  other  institution  referred  to  as  giving  a  poor  prep-  The  Za- 
aration  for  life  considered  as  an  economic  battle  to  be  ^ru§a  or 
fought  single-handed,  was  the  famous  and  much  dis-  household 
cussed  <<ZadrugaJl.pr.  communal  household  of -the  South 
S^avs.*     The    German    phrase    for    it,    "House    Com 
munion'"'   or  "Community"  well  expresses  its  nature. 
Its  essence  is  the  custom  of  owning  and  carrying  on  a 
housendtd~~aTTtf~fara  as  -  a  family 

association.  The  administration  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
elected  head,  generally,  though  not  necessarily,  the  father 
or  eldest  man.  The  choice  depends  on  character,  ability 
and  circumstances.  A  woman,,  usually  but  not  always 
the  wife  of  the  head  man,  is  chosen  to  superintend  and 
direct  the  women's  work  and  sometimes  a  woman  is  made 
the  head  of  the  whole  Zadruga. 

We  were  in  one  such  communal  household  not  far 
from  Agram,  where  sixty  persons  were  living  in  com 
munism.  In  the  main  homestead  the  living  rooms  opened 
off  a  gallery  or  verandah,  raised  a  story  from  the  ground. 
One  room  was  set  apart  for  unmarried  girls ;  in  the  main 
room  was  a  row  of  big  beds  along  each  side,  and  at  one 
end  stood  the  table  at  which  all  the  men  eat  together. 
The  women  eat  afterwards.  In  the  yard  was  a  well, 

*The  Zadruga  is  of  great  interest  to  students  of  social  in 
stitutions,  and  has  been  the  subject  of  much  controversy. 
Attention  was  called  to  it  by  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  in  his 
"Ancient  Law"  and  also  in  his  "Village  Communities  in  the 
East  and  West,"  and  by  Emile  de  Laveleye,  the  Belgian  econo 
mist,  in  his  '.'De  La  Propriete  et  ses  Formes  Primitives"  (trans 
lated  and  revised  by  Karl  Bucher  in  1879  as  "Das  Ureigenthum"). 
Maine  and  de  Laveleye  interpret  the  House  Communion  as  a 
remnant  of  an  early  and  once  widespread  communism.  Since 
their  time  more  detailed  and  critical  studies  of  the  subject  have 
been  made.  The  same  institution,  or  one  closely  similar,  exists 
or  has  existed  among  the  Slovaks. 

For  a  list  of  references  on  the  subject  of  the  Zadruga,  see  the 
Bibliography  under  that  head. 


162 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Passing  of 
the  Za- 

druga 


and  about  it  a  variety  of  farm  buildings  and  also  small 
houses  where  some  of  the  young  married  couples  live. 
They  eat,  however,  with  the  others. 

This  was  quite  a  wealthy  Zadruga,  with  money  in  the 
bank,  and  the  old  man  at  its  head  was  likewise  the  head 
official  of  the  village.  Three  of  the  sons  were  away, 
"two  in  America  and  one  in  '  Spittsburg'  "  (sc.  Pittsburg) 
and  the  old  man  seemed  to  be  seized  with  a  sudden  sense 
of  yearning,  for  he  twice  smoothed  his  worn  hands  down 
my  cheeks  and  said,  "Greet  Janko  for  me  if  you  see  him 
in  America." 

In  Agram  I  had  a  very  interesting  talk  with  a  gentle 
man,  a  literary  man  of  cosmopolitan  reputation  in  Slavic 
countries  as  a  writer  and  politician,  who  was  brought  up 
in  a  Zadruga  till  the  age  of  ten — a  Zadruga,  as  it  hap 
pened,  administered  by  a  woman — and  who  is  a  great 
admirer  of  the  institution.  It  has,  I  judge,  the  good  and 
bad  features  of  communal  or  semi-communal  life  in 
general.  There  is  a  lessened  appeal  to  energy  and 
initiative,  the  lazy  man  is  better  off  than  (in  an  economic 
sense  at  least)  he  deserves  to  be,  and  it  is  easy  to  play 
a  rather  passive  role.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  great 
economy  of  time,  labor  and  capital  and  more  room  for 
organization  of  the  available  forces.  One  or  two  women 
are  told  off  by  the  elected  house  mother  to  do  the  cooking 
and  household  tasks,  the  others  are  delegated  for  field 
work,  herding,  and  so  forth,  according  to  circum 
stances;  and  similarly  with  the  men.  There  are  no  divi 
sions  among  heirs,  no  law  suits,  no  expensive  settlements, 
and  the  burden  of  taxation  is  lighter.  It  makes  possible 
a  varied  and  highly  social  household  life,  and  is,  more 
over,  a  training  in  co-operation,  tolerance,  and  more 
than  one  beautiful  moral  quality. 

The  customs  of  the  Zadruga  seem  to  have  made  pro 
gressive  concessions  to  individualism,  but  not  enough  to 
save  it.  In  1848  in  Civil  Croatia,  and  a  generation  later 
within  the  Military  Frontier  also,  the  division  of  Zadru- 
gas,  which  was  not  before  allowed,  was  permitted  by 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA 


1 63 


law.  The  old  associations  began  thereupon  rapidly  to 
dissolve;  so  rapidly  that  statesmen  before  long  took 
alarm  at  the  resulting  subdivision  of  land,  and  passed  a 
law  more  favorable  to  the  old  communal  groups,  and 
prohibiting  division  where  the  portions  would  be  smaller 
than  a  certain  minimum,  fixed  at  from  three  to  eight 
yokes  (about  four  and  a  half  to  twelve  acres)  in  different 
districts.* 

When  a  Zadruga  is  divided,  whether  by  legal  process 
or  secretly  by  mutual  consent  to  avoid  legal  expenses 
and  increase  of  taxation,  even  a  prosperous  group  too 
often  makes  a  number  of  poor  if  not  actually  insolvent 
families.  Not  only  is  the  land  cut  up,  often  into  small 
inadequate  lots,  but  the  cattle  and  necessaries  of  all 
kinds  are  divided,  and  sometimes  the  old  communal 
dwelling  is  torn  down  and  divided  beam  by  beam.  There 
are  not  ploughs  enough  to  fit  out  all  the  separate  under 
takings,  and  they  have  not  sufficient  capital  and  must 
resort  to  loans.  Moreover,  the  individual  members 
lack  experience  and  perhaps  capacity,  as  well  as  capital, 
for  conducting  an  independent  enterprise,  and  it  is  saic 
that  the  disastrous  result  of  the  dissolution  of  Zadrugas 

is  one"of  the  causes  which  drive the -Croatian  peasants 

to  emigrate^to America.... 

In  general,  Croatian  living  is  primitive,  with  the  charm  Primitive 
and  the  drawbacks  that  that  implies.  On  a  house  wall 
in  a  Croatian  village  there  was  pointed  out  to  us  a  rude 
drawing,  made  perhaps  by  some  child,  of  the  epic  hero 
Marko  Kralevitch  (Marko,  the  king's  son),  the  subject  of 
some  of  the  most  famous  Servo-Croatian  folksongs.  The 
hero  is  said  to  be  not  dead  but  sleeping  under  the  beauti- 

*  In  spite  of  the  process  of  dissolution  of  these  communities, 
which  in  some  districts  has  swept  them  away  completely,  it 
was  shown  by  an  inquiry  in  1890  that  nearly  a  fifth  of  the  popu 
lation  was  then  living  in  such  communal  families.  Most  of 
these,  however,  were  small — 8  per  cent  having  ten  members  or 
less — and  differed  from  ordinary  families,  not  in  size  but  in  the 
fact  that  they  held  their  property  like  a  corporation ;  no  member 
being  at  liberty  to  claim  a  division  or  alienate  his  rights. 
See  Bibliography  under  Zoricic. 


164 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Croatian 

peasant 

nouses 


ful  snowy  heights  of  the  Velebit,  ready  to  return  and  free 
the  land  when  its  hour  of  direst  need  shall  come;  and 
in  the  capital  of  Montenegro  we  saw  a  blind  gusla  player, 
with  a  head  like  a  marble  Homer,  singing  historical  epics 
in  the  square.  So  near  are  these  people  to  ages  which  in 
Western  Europe  are  far  beyond  all  living  memory. 

A  Croatian  house  of  the  poorer  sort  is  often  very 
pretty,  with  its  steep  shingled  roof  and  whitewashed  or 
stuccoed  sides.  Frequently  there  is  no  chimney,  and  the 
little  trap  door  in  the  roof  is  kept  closed  during  the 
winter,  so  that  till  spring  the  smoke  has  no  exit.  This 
is  not  so  bad  as  it  sounds,  as  the  fire  is  often  on  a  stone 
hearth  in  the  centre  of  the  house,  while  to  the  right  and 
left  are  rooms  which  are  really  more  like  little  dwellings 
or  boxes  built  inside  the  house.  The  smoke  rolls  through 
the  space  above  the  planking  which  ceils  these,  and  this 
part  of  the  building  is  often  crusted  with  the  black, 
shiny  deposit  of  the  soot  while  the  living  room  is  clear  of 
it  within.  This  room  may  be  heated  with  a  stove  of  un-  • 
glazed  tiles  which  is  fed  from  outside  the  room  through 
an  opening  in  the  wall  and  which,  like  all  European 
stoves  of  this  type,  gives  no  direct  fire  heat  and  no  ven 
tilation,  but  radiates  warmth  from  its  own  surface. 
Such  a  stove  is  heated  like  a  Dutch  oven,  with  a  brisk 
fire  quickly  burned  out  and  usually  made  only  once  a 
day.  These  Croatian  stoves  are  often  made  of  what 
looks  like  a  series  of  unglazed  flower-pots  embedded, 
empty,  and  mouths  out,  in  a  mass  of  clay.  This  pigeon 
holed  exterior  gives  a  great  extent  of  radiating  surface, 
which  is  the  prime  object  in  all  stoves  constructed  on 
this  principle,  and  will  sometimes  give  out  warmth  for 
three  days  without  needing  to  be  re-heated.  Around 
the  stove  are  rails  for  drying  wet  clothes. 

In  poorer  houses,  there  may  be  simply  a  fire  of  twigs 
and  branches  on  the  floor  and  a  baby  wrapped  in  rags 
lying  in  the  ashes.  The  family  sleep  probably  in  one 
room,  occasionally  on  straw  covered  with  the  curious 


CROATIAN  VILLAGE  SCENES 

1.  In  "Lipa."  Thirty  persons  from  this  house  alone  are  in  America.  2  and  3.  A  town 
that  has  benefited  by  American  remittances;  it  has  water  supply,  street  lamps  and  a  savings 
bank.  4.  Roofs  protected  against  the  Bora.  5.  In  Otocac. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  165 

Croatian  blankets  which  are  almost  as  shaggy  as  the 
original  sheep,  and  woven  in  bright,  angular  patterns. 

The  windows  are  apt  to  be  small.  We  heard  of  people  Small 
having  been  burned  up  because  they  could  not  get  out  wmdows 
through  the  windows  when  the  house  was  on  fire  and  the 
doorway  cut  off.  But  this  defect  is  not  confined  to 
Croatia.  It  was  among  the  Slovaks  that  a  priest  told 
us  that  he  preached  against  windows  "so  small  that  it 
made  an  eclipse  of  the  sun  if  a  hen  flew  in,"  a  figure  of 
speech  suggestive  in  more  ways  than  one.  It  was  in 
Galicia  that  a  woman  pointed  out  a  small  single  pane 
fixed  in  the  wall  to  the  east  so  that  it  might  be  possible 
to  see  the  sun  rise  and  know  when  to  get  up,  and  ex 
plained  to  us  that  there  was  no  window  to  the  north 
because  the  north  is  evil. 

The  cattle  are  often  accommodated  under  the  same  roof  Domestic 
with  the  family,  either  on  the  same  level,  only  separated  ammals 
by  a  partition,  or  underneath  in  a  sort  of  basement  stall. 
I  frequently  heard,  and  not  alone  in  Croatia,  that  families 
had  animals  living  with  them  more  sociably  than  this, 
as  the  Irish  used  to  have  both  at  home  and  in  America, 
but  I  never  saw  a  case — except,  indeed,  hens  straying 
in  and  out,  and  once  some  small  pigs  who  seemed  to  have 
the  run  of  the  house. 

The  poor  cows,  as  we  saw  them  emerging  after  their 
long  winter  into  the  spring  sunshine,  were  pitiable  ob 
jects,  with  the  dirt  so  caked  on  their  flanks  as  to  tear 
the  flesh  and  make  sores.  One  official  told  us  of  his 
efforts  to  get  the  people  to  bring  their  cattle  to  market 
clean.  Except  in  this  instance  of  neglect,  however,  I 
have  never  seen  or  heard  anything  in  Europe  or  America 
to  suggest  other  than  kind  treatment  of  animals  by  Slavs 
of  any  nationality ;  neither  do  I  remember  ever  having 
seen  a  child  abused  among  them. 

In  the  poor  western  district  of  Croatia  the  peasants, 
though  economical,  are  said  to  live  much  better  than  the 
inhabitants  of  the  richer  eastern  counties.  Polenta 


l66  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

(corn  meal  mush)  is  much  eaten,  sometimes  with  sauer 
kraut.  But  there  is  plenty  of  meat,  too.  No  family  is 
too  poor  to  kill  a  pig  at  Christmas  which  will  give  pork 
for  three  months,  and  in  spring  there  are  lambs  to  furnish 
fresh  meat.  The  sheep's  milk  cheese  is  excellent,  but 
owing  to  lack  of  facilities  it  is  not  an  article  of  export 
as  it  is  among  the  Slovaks. 

The  The  marriage  customs  are  interesting.     A  girl  is  ex 

pected,  at  least  in  certain  districts,  to  bring  a  dowry  in 
cluding  at  the  very  least  a  chest  and  a  complete  outfit, 
from  cap  to  shoes,  for  the  bridegroom  as  well  as  for  her 
self.  I  am  told  this  is  also  the  way  among  the  Bul 
garians,  and  that  the  little  girl  begins  on  her  knitting  as 
soon  as  she  can  be  taught  to  hold  the  needles,  since  she 
must  have  ready  stockings  for  herself  and  her  future 
husband,  enough  to  last  both  their  lives.  The  Croatian 
woman  is  always  knitting  as  she  minds  her  cattle  or 
goes  about  her  business.  In  many  places  the  men  wear 
big  knit  garments  such  as  we  call  sweaters,  and  heavy 
knit  socks  with  a  sort  of  plaid  pattern  about  the  ankle. 

The  man  need  bring  no  property  to  his  bride,  and 
consequently  the  birth  of  a  boy  whose  marriage  will  en 
rich  the  family  is  far  more  desired  than  that  of  a  girl  who 
must  be  portioned  off.  A  girl  who  is  poor  cannot  hope 
to  marry.  This  is  in  the  inland  counties,  and  is  in  strik 
ing  contrast  to  the  custom  on  the  coast,  where  a  girl 
marries  without  a  dowry,  except  that  she  must  have  her 
personal  ornaments  (necklace  of  coins  and  what  not). 
Without  these  no  girl  of  the  coast  districts  can  look  for 
a  lover,  but  for  her  other  property  is  not  essential. 
The  making  When  a  marriage  is  to  be  discussed,  representatives 
of  a  match  Q£  ^g  two  s^es  come  together,  generally  the  girl's  parents 
and  two  or  three  people,  very  often  including  a  brother, 
uncle  or  aunt,  to  act  for  the  man.  The  bridegroom  and 
his  health  are  discussed,  but  his  family  is  a  question  a 
hundred  times  more  important.  What  sort  of  people  are 
they?  Does  his  father  beat  his  mother?  What  is  his 
own  relation  to  his  brother,  his  sister?  Is  his  married 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  167 

brother  a  good  husband?  (and,  from  the  other  side — Is 
the  girl's  married  sister  a  good  wife?)  The  inquiry  may 
last  two  or  three  days  or  even  weeks.  The  agreement 
is  made  simply  by  passing  the  word  dobro  (good).  The 
parents  then  have  a  meeting  at  church  or  elsewhere. 
After  this  the  next  step  is  taken ;  the  representatives  of 
the  two  sides  come  formally  together,  and  an  hour  or  so 
later  comes  the  prospective  bridegroom.  He  gives  an 
apple  to  the  girl  and  she  gives  him  a  handkerchief.  In 
songs  a  girl  is  often  likened  to  an  apple,  and  it  seems  to 
be  a  token  at  once  of  comeliness  and  fruitfulness. 

The  customs  which  accompany  the  celebration  of  the  The 
marriage   itself   are   extremely   elaborate.     A   marriage  ^e< 
speech  which  is  handed  down  by  verbal  memory  takes 
up  eight  or  ten  printed  pages.     A  certain  student  of 
folklore  would  not  believe  that  this  was  genuine  till  he 
found  a  peasant  who  convinced  him  by  reciting  it  entire 
while  he  held  the  book.* 

It  is  not  surprising  that  where  life  in  general  is  still   Illiteracy 
so  primitive,  education  too,  at  least  in  the  sense  of  "book 
learning,"  is  backward. 

The  figures   of   the   Croatian   census  are   interesting.      'JJ- 
They  show  the  following  percentages  among  inhabitants 
over  six  years  old: 

TABLE    11.— CROATIA.      PERCENTAGE    OF    LITERACY 
AND  ILLITERACY. 

Able  to  read  and  write:                PERCENT  PERCENT 

Men 23  52.0 

Women 1 1  36.0 

Able  to  read  only: 

Men : 2  0.75 

Women 2  2.0 

Able  to  neither  read  nor  write : 

Men 74  47.25 

Women 87  62.0 

The  American  immigration  figures  unfortunately  treat 
Croatians  and  Slovenians  as  one  group.  The  illiteracy 

*  The  above  account  was  given  me  orally  by  a  Croatian 
scholar,  but  for  this  and  much  else,  see  Krauss:  "  Sitte  und  Brauch 
der  Sud-Slaven,"  and  also  his  "Sagen  und  Marchen  der  Sud- 
Slaven." 


i68 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Language 
and  educa 
tion 


School 
attendance 


of  this  group  in  1900.  was  37.4  per  cent,  less  than  that 
of  the  Ruthenians  (with  49  per  cent)  but  more  than  that 
of  any  other  Slavic  group.* 

Fortunately,  Croatia,  though  in  much  else  she  chafes 
under  Hungarian  domination  in  spite  of  her  constitution 
ally-recognized  autonomy,  has^free  hand  in  education. 
Consequently  the  Croatians  enjoy  the  great  advantage 
that  teaching,  alike  in  the  elementary  class  and  the 
university,  is  in  the  native  language,  the  Croatian.  This 
is  one  of  the  most  beautiful,  or  at  least  the  most 
euphonious,  of  the  Slavic  tongues,  following  the  apparent 
law  which  gives  to  southern  speech  more  open  vowels, 
fewer  combinations  of  consonants,  and  in  general  more 
liquidity  and  grace. 

School  .attendance  is  compulsory  from  seven  to  twelve 
years  of  age,  and  from  twelve  to  fourteen  "continuation 
classes"  are  required.  In  one  such  class  which  I  saw 
I  judged  that  these  hours  of  school  were  a  hardship  for 
poor  little  apprentice  boys  who  came  tired  and  fagged 
from  the  shoemaker's,  bench  or  the  anvil.  It  ought  to 
be  a  good  thing  to  have  the  school  period  overlap  into 
the  working  period,  but  in  practice,  under  industry  con 
ducted  for  profit,  half  time  systems  unless  carefully 
guarded  are  too  likely  to  mean  a  double  exploitation  of 
a  youngster's  strength. 

The  attempt  to  make  school  attendance  universal  is 
far  from  successful  as  yet.  In  Lika-Krbava  I  was  told 
that  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  children,  do  not  go  to  school 
mainly  because  their  homes  are  scattered.  The  parents 
are  said  to  be  generally  glad  to  send  their  boys  to  school, 
but  less  concerned  to  have  the  girls  learn.  In  this 
county  there  were  10,601  boys  at  school  and  2,720  girls. 
Sometimes  the  children  cannot  go  for  lack  of  school  room, 
but  in  thirteen  years  this  county  had  built  thirty-five 
new  schools  and  enlarged  twenty  more;  so  there  is 
progress. 

Very  interesting  was  a  project  of  Mr.  Krshnjavi,  a 
*  See  further  Appendix  XXVII,  page  479. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  169 

former  minister  of  education.  He  had  picked  from  coun 
try  schools,  a  few  here  and  a  few  there,  some  fifty  of  the 
most  promising  pupils  and  sent  them  at  government 
expense  to  a  "gymnasium"  to  receive  a  good  secondary 
education  fitting  them  to  enter  the  university.  He  was 
delighted  at  the  progress  that  they  were  making,  when 
his  retirement  from  office  intervened,  and  though  lack 
ing  only  one  year  of  graduation,  they  were  all  sent  back 
to  their  narrow  peasant  homes. 

One  obstacle  to  continuous  schooling  is  the  excessive 
number  of  holidays,  where  both  Catholic  and  Greek 
orthodox  festivals  have  to  be  observed.  In  some  places 
the  weekly  market  day  is  a  holiday  besides,  but  in  this 
case  it  is  probably  taken  instead  of  the  Saturday  holiday. 

One  must  remember  that  illiteracy  does  not  necessarily  Other 
connote  either  stupidity  or  lack  of  desire  to  learn,  and  ^ure 
that  it  is  compatible  with  all  such  culture  as  can  be  trans 
mitted  orally,  which  is  much  more  according  as  a  society 
is  more  primitive.  The  printed  page  was  not  necessary 
to  the  composition  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  nor  to  their 
circulation.  "In  every  village,"  I  was  told  in  Croatia, 
"there  is  a  library  bought  by  peasants  alone,  and  in 
winter  they  often  come  together  to  have  some  one  read 
to  them,  not  only  newspapers  but  more  solid  literature, 
such  as  translations  of  Tolstoy,  Turgenieff,  and  Do- 
stoyevsky."  Such  glimpses  suggest  what  a  different 
thing  illiteracy  is  under  different  circumstances. 

Reading  clubs  are  widespread,  and  together  with  an 
inviting  room  where  the  papers  subscribed  for  in  com 
mon  can  be  read,  are  a  pleasant  feature  of  village  life. 

Another  occasional  stimulus  is  the  visit  of  a  troupe  Native 

of  wandering  actors. We  were  fortunate  in  happening  drama 

to  see  a  performance  of  this  kind  in  the  village  which  I 
have  spoken  of  under  the  name  of  Lipa.  The  play  was 
a  grandiose  historical  tragedy  and  was  given  on  an  im 
promptu  stage,  lighted  by  two  ordinary  oil  lamps  and 
so  small  that  the  dying  hero's  head  lay  in  the  doorway 
of  one  of  the  side  exits  while  his  feet  stuck  out  between 


170  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

the  lamps.  The  language  was  Croatian  and  quite  un 
intelligible  to  us.  Yet  over  all  these  obstacles  the 
art  of  the  chief  actor  triumphed.  I  think  I  have  rarely 
been  stirred  in  the  same  way  except  by  Booth.  Duse 
and  Coquelin  I  have  seen  in  roles  of  such  a  different 
quality  that  I  cannot  make  comparisons.  Salvini,  too, 
moved  in  a  different  world.  But  these  are  the  names 
that  occur  to  me  in  trying  to  measure  the  genius  of  a 
strolling  player  in  a  Croatian  village!  I  am  hoping  that 
some  good  fate  may  give  me  another  chance  to  hear 
Kostic". 

This  village  boasted,  too,  among  its  teachers,  a  lady 
who  is  said  to  write  very  pretty  Croatian  verse,  and  who 
was  kind  enough  to  write  for  me  in  German  the  charm 
ing  account  of  emigration  as  she  has  seen  it,  which  is 
appended  to  this  chapter  as  "Notes  from  My  Village." 
Health  and  As  regards  health  and  morality,  I  cannot  say  that  I 
morality  heard  no  criticism  of  the  Croatians.  Especially  are  the 
women  of  Slavonia,  which  is  much  richer  than  the  west 
ern  part  of  the  country,  said  to  be  excessively  addicted 
to  luxury  and  beautiful  clothes,  and  in  order  to  gratify 
these  tastes,  to  limit  their  families  and  to  conduct  them 
selves  loosely.  It  is  hard  to  say  how  much  such  rumors 
amount  to,  and  they  involve  a  district  with  which  Amer 
ica  has  little  direct  concern.  But  throughout  Croatia, 
as  in  some  other  emigration  districts,  one  hears  a  good 
deal  of  sporadic  complaint  of  the  injury  to  morality 
through  emigration.  Though  cases  where  the  husband 
has  deserted  his  family  appear  to  be  rare,  wives  left  alone 
at  home  sometimes  misuse  their  freedom,  and  I  have 
heard  it  said  that  infanticide  has  increased. 

The  number  of  illegitimate  births  is  apt  to  be  high  in 
countries  where  there  are  or  have  been  barriers  to  legal 
marriage.  Under  the  old  system  of  communal  families 
there  was  considerable  practical  restriction  on  marriage, 
and  the  military  regulations  still  forbid  a  man's  marrying 
between  eighteen  and  twenty-three  unless  he  can  prove 
that  there  is  in  the  household  no  woman  between  sixteen 


<5 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  17 1 

and  sixty.  The  military  authorities  visit  the  house  to 
make  sure  that  there  really  is  no  able-bodied  woman 
available.  In  spite  of  these  facts  the  illegitimacy  rate 
seems  creditable  at  70  per  1000  births.  This  is  worse 
than  in  a  group  of  countries  including  Ireland,  Holland, 
England,  Switzerland,  Finland,  Roumania  and  Italy 
(ranging  from  Ireland  with  27  to  Italy  with  67),  but 
better  than  Norway,  Scotland,  France,  Germany  and 
Sweden,  ranging  from  72  to  106  per  1000. 

The  most  serious  charge  I  heard  made  was  that  in 
certain  villages  the  population  is  honeycombed  with — as 
I  understood  it — venereal  disease^  so  that  officials  having 
occasion  to  go  tHere  carry  their  own  eating  utensils 
with  them.  But  in  this  whole  matter  the  most  "  ad 
vanced"  populations  have  nothing  to  boast  of;  and  any 
one  who  knows  country  life  anywhere  is  likely  to  be 
free  of  the  widespread  delusion  that  what  is  rural  is 
necessarily  more  innocent  than  what  is  urban.* 

As  regards  orderliness  and  safety,  about  which  travelers  The  popula- 
returning  from  any  place  off  the  beaten  track  are  often  tlon  °rderly 
asked,  I  doubt  if  one  could  find  a  safer  country  than 
Croatia.  I  remember  one  late  afternoon  in  Gospic,  the 
county  town  of  Lika-Krbava,  where  we  walked  through 
oak  woods,  purple  with  a  carpet  of  spring  crocus  and  lit 
with  the  sunset,  and  through  roads  along  which  peasants 
were  returning  from  the  long  market  day  and  its  follow 
ing  carousals,  driving  home  in  tipsy  excitement.  Though 
we  were  two  women  without  escort  we  felt  no  fear,  and 
apparently  had  no  cause  for  timidity.  In  this  once  wild 
frontier  no  case  of  highway  robbery  is  remembered  in 
forty-five  years,  and  we  were  asked  with  incredulity  if  it 
could  be  true,  as  emigrants  reported  from  America, 
that  they  were  in  danger  of  being  assaulted  if  they 

*  It  is  satisfactory  to  learn  that  syphilis  appears  to  be  one 
of  the  rarest  diseases  among  immigrants.  For  instance,  of  3427 
patients  in  the  immigrant  hospital  at  Ellis  Island  in  the  year 
ending  June  30,  1903,  only  two  were  found  to  be  suffering  from 
this  disease.  See  Annual  Report  of  the  Surgeon  General  of 
Public  Health  and  Marine  Hospital  Service  of  the  United  States 
for  the  Fiscal  Year  1904,  page  194. 


172  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

walked  home  alone  with  their  pay  along  the  lonely 
stretches  of  railroad  where  they  worked — that  they  must 
go  in  groups  of  ten  or  twelve  and  carry  revolvers .  We 
"explained  that  this  could  be  true,  if  at  all,  only  in  wild 
and  out  of  the  way  places.  I  did  not  know  that  Chi 
cago*  in  April,  1906,  would  report  a  carnival  of  highway 
murder,  nor  had  I  then  found  myself  in  the  South  for 
bidden  to  walk  anywhere  alone  on  quiet  country  roads.* 
Agram  I  have  been  speaking  of  the  Croatian  countryside,  but 

Croatian s  are  influenced  by  the  life  of  their  national 
capital  as  are  none  of  the  other  nationalities  with  which 
we  are  dealing,  except  the  Bohemians.  To  a  Croatian, 
to  write  of  his  country  without  speaking  of  Zagreb 
(or  as  we  commonly  call  it,  Agram)  would  be  to  give 
Hamlet  with  the  Prince  of  Denmark  left  out.f 

It  is  a  little  city  with  only  about  53,000  inhabitants, 
but  it  is  a  capital  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  On 
the  hill  is  what  remains  of  the  ancient  town,  with  the 
residence  of  the  Ban  or  governor,  and  curious  memorials 
of  the  barbarities  of  the  past.  Nearby  is  the  quarter 
which  formerly  was  the  domain  of  the  cathedral  chapter 
which  of  old  waged  bloody  wars  with  the  secular  powers. 
At  the  foot  of  the  hill  is  the  market  place  with  Ban 
Jellac'ic'  on  horseback  forever  waving  his  bronze  sword 
in  the  direction  of  Hungary.  The  market  scene  itself 
is  like  a  bed  of  flowers,  the  prevailing  colors  being  the 
white  of  linen  garments  and  the  orange  scarlet  of  ribbons 
and  necklaces  and  dangling  garters,  of  aprons  and  em 
broideries.  J 

The  modem        But  most  surprising  is  the  modern  city  with  its  boule- 

Clty  vards  and  fine  residence  blocks,  and  above  all  its  wealth 

of  institutions  of  culture.     As  one  follows  the  avenue 

*  For  the  sake  of  fairness  I  will  add  that  I  have  been  told  in 
Pennsylvania  of  a  murder  of  a  paymaster  by  two  Croatians. 

t  For  a  sketch  of  Agram  by  an  inhabitant,  see  Lucerna,  Ca 
milla:  "Zagreb,"  Agramer  Tagblatt,  April  10,  1909,  page  9. 

J  Excellent  pictures  of  Agram  market  scenes  and  of  other 
Croatian,  Dalmatian  and  Istrian  views  will  be  found  in  an 
article,  "In  Quaint,  Curious  Croatia,"  by  F.  J.  Koch,  National 
Geographic  Magazine,  pages  809-832  (Dec.,  1908). 


173 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Causes  and 
course  of  / 
emigration 


north  from  the  railroad  station  the  panorama  is  for  some 
distance  worthy  of  Paris  or  Vienna,  and  in  monumental 
character  and  absence  of  any  jarring  note  utterly  be 
yond  comparison  with  anything  that  I  think  of  in  Amer 
ica.  The  Fine  Arts  Building,  in  which  yearly  exhibi 
tions  are  held,  stands  by  itself  in  the  first  block  of  the 
central  park  space;  in  the  same  situation  in  the  next 
square  is  the  Chemistry  Building  of  the  University;  then 
comes  an  open  garden  with  statues;  then  the  building  of 
the  South  Slav  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  founded 
by  the  patriot  Bishop  Strossmayer,  who  died  while  we 
were  in  Croatia,  full  of  years  and  of  honor.  This  latter 
building  contains  a  permanent  collection  of  painting 
and  sculpture  gathered  and  given  by  Bishop  Stross 
mayer,  an  Archeological  Museum,  etc. 

Further  to  the  west  is  the  public  theatre  where  Croa 
tian  dramas  are  given  throughout  the  season.  Nearby 
is  the  University  with  its  professional  schools  (another 
foundation  of  Bishop  Strossmayer's)  and  near  this  again 
the  excellent  Art  and  Industrial  School,  due,  like  much 
else,  to  the  far-seeing  plans  of  the  late  minister  of  educa 
tion,  Mr.  Krshnjavi,  a  man  who  has  known  how  to 
stimulate  and  bring  forward  a  whole  generation  of  young 
artists  and  authors.  To  get  a  little  into  this  atmosphere 
was  like  going  into  the  woods  in  spring,  when  one  feels 
the  new  life  unfolding  on  every  side. 

To  turn  now  to  a  more  special  consideration  of  Croa 
tian  emigration,  we  may  note  first  that,  as  regards  causes 
of  emigration,  Croatia  shares  with  countries  like  upper 
Hungary  or  Galicia  the  impulse  resulting  from  the  aboli 
tion  of  feudal  serfdom  in  1848,  and  the  invasion  of  the 
ol67seif -sufficing  peasant  economy  by  modern  wares  and 
ways".'  But'Croatia  suffers  not  only  from  the  unstable 
"equilibrium  of  an  economy  where  modern  desires  are 
awaking  while  there  is  as  yet  lack  of  capital,  lack  of 
manufactures,  lack  of  railroads,  lack  of  modern  agri 
cultural  methods,  and  in  some  districts  actual  lack  of 
sufficient  usable  soil.  Besides  all  this,  certain  parts  at 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  175 

least  of  Croatia  suffer  from  a  forced  transition,  hurrying  i 
the  evolution  ^r^nTurTes  into  a  generation — the  transi 
tion  from  the  subjection  and  partial  support  of  frontier 
soldiery  and  from  the  sheltered  mutual  dependence  of 
communal  family  life,  to  the  full  responsibility  of  self- 
maintenance  on  an  individual  footing  in  a  novel  competi 
tive  world. 

Croatian  emigration  to  America  began  first  among  the  Earliest 
always  mobile  sea-faring  population  of  Dalmatia  and  ^oast  ^ 
seaboard  Croatia  and  the  islands  which  stud  the  Adriatic 
coast,  where  it  occurred  sporadically  before  1850.  This 
population,  cut  off  from  the  inland  by  the  great  limestone 
range  which  runs  just  back  of  the  shore  line,  has  a  charac 
ter  and  situation  all  its  own,  and  though  chronologically  it 
should  be  considered  first,  it  will,  for  reasons  of  conven 
ience,  be  taken  up  in  the  next  chapter.  The  present  one 
will  deal  only  with  the  main  body  of  the  Croatians,  those 
of  the  inland. 

The  original   occasion   of  emigration  from  the  back  Modrus- 
country  seems  to  have  been  the  opening  of  the  first  county* 
railroad  to  the  coast,  built  in   1873  from  Karlstadt  to  Loss  of  old 
Fiume,  which   started   emigration   from   Modrus-Fiume  occupations 
county.       Previously  freight  and  passengers  had  come 
over  the  mountains  on  wheels  or  on  pack  animals,  and 
this  gave  occupation  to  a  large  part  of  the  mountain 
population.     An  eighteenth  century  traveler  says  that 
this  traffic  then  brought  $16,000  or  $20,000  into  circula 
tion,  and  he  tells  of  women  carrying  heavy  burdens  on 
their  shoulders  for  a  four  or  five  hours'  climb  up  the 
mountains,  spinning  as  they  went.     When  on  the  open 
ing  of  the  railroad  in  1873  this  source  of  earning  was  cut 
off,  the  people  had  to  look  elsewhere,  for  their  lands  could 
not  support  them.     In  some  districts  this  had  always 
been  the  case,  and  surplus  hands  had  sought  a  living  in 
seasonal  employment  abroad  or  in  peddling,  but  after 
1873  the  difficulty  became  widespread  and  by  the  early 
eighties  people  from  the  northern  part  of  the  county  were 
beginning  to  go  to  the  United  States.     When  we  were  in  a 


176  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

village  of  this  district,  which  I  will  call  "Lipa,"  whence 
people  had  been  emigrating  to  America  since  1885,  we 
were  told  that  of  a  population  of  3,400,  1,800  were  in 
America.  So  many  of  their  people  are  in  Calumet, 
Michigan,  that  they  refer  to  it  as  "New  Lipa."  I 
photographed  a  house  from  which  I  was  told  thirty 
persons  had  gone,  and  in  our  little  inn  the  rooms  were 
adorned  with  pictures  of  relatives  in  American  finery. 

Here,  as  in  all  the  districts  of  Croatia  where  there  are 
forests,  the  men  are  famous  woodsmen.  They  are 
masters  of  the  axe,  and  a  good  worker  can  hew  accurately 
to  a  line  for  sixty  feet.  Accordingly,  in  the  United 
States  they  often  are  woodworkers,  stave  cutters  along 
the  Mississippi  or  lumbermen  in  Michigan.  An  interest 
ing  man  whom  we  ran  across  was  a  master  carpenter  who 
had  perfected  himself  by  the  old  wander jahr  plan,  going, 
as  he  told  us,  to  Germany,  Paris  and  elsewhere,  to  learn 
new  ways  and  bring  home  new  ideas.  Now,  he  said, 
this  is  not  necessary,  as  there  is  a  good  trades  school  in 
Agram. 

Croatians  are  said  to  be  clever  workmen  in  general, 
quick  to  catch  an  idea  and  carry  it  out.  They  have  a 
proverb,  "What  he  sees,  he  makes."  I  have  not  hap 
pened  to  learn  in  America  whether  they  have  this  repu 
tation  here,  where  they  come  into  comparison  with 
other  nationalities. 

Agram  A  local  cause  of  emigration  which  affected  the  wine 

growing  districts,  especially  those  about  Jaska  and  Karl- 
stadt  IQ,.  Agram  county,  was  the  phylloxera,  which  ap 
parently  was  brought  into'  the  neighborhood  of  Agram 
in  1872,  by  a  gentleman  who  imported  some  American 
vines  from  France.  It  also  got  into  the  Varasdin  dis 
trict  and  spread  from  there  as  a  centre.  It  appeared, 
too,  in  Syrmium,  coming  from  across  the  Danube  in 
Hungary,  where  it  had  broken  out  as  early  as  1870  or 
1871.  In  consequence  of  this,  emigration  began  fairly 
early  in  the  district  about  Karlstadt  and  Jaska.  It  is 
said  to  have  started  in  1884  and  1885,  but  it  greatly  in- 


CROATIAN  TYPES,  LIKA  DISTRICT 


EMIGRATION  FROM  CROATIA  177 

creased  later,  especially  in  1900  and  1901.  Money  has 
been  sent  back  from  America  to  replant  the  vineyards 
with  American  stocks  which  are  immune  to  phylloxera, 
and  on  which  European  varieties  are  afterward  grafted. 
This  is  an  expensive  operation,  but  it  is  the  only  way  of 
meeting  the  evil. 

About  the  middle  of  the  nineties  the  emigration  began  Lika- 
from   Lika-Krbava.     The   first   men   probably  went,    I  §2jJJ?. 
was  told,  as  a  result  of  reading  about  America  in  the  Lack  of 
papers.     This  region  not  only  was  formerly  the  scene 
of  bloody  conflicts,  as  the  name  denotes,  but  is  largely 
sterile,  stony,  and  subject  to  harsh  climatic  conditions  as 
already  described.     With  a  population  in  1900  of  208,000 
it  has  only  159,000  yokes  of  arable  land,*  which  is  only 
about  three-quarters  of  a  yoke  apiece,  and  a  yoke  is 
reckoned  necessary  to  feed  one  person.     This  is  actual 
over-population,  for  manufacturers  are  practically  nil, 
and  there  is  no  railroad  in  a  region  nearly  twice  as  big 
as  Rhode  Island,  as  may  be  seen  on  Map  IX. 

Of  course,  if  culture  were  intensive  it  would  be  a  differ 
ent  situation,  but  the  methods  are  primitive;  the  plough 
may  be  of  wood,  and  the  sower,  scattering  unselected 
seed,  plants  weeds  with  the  grain. 

The  oxen  and  horses  are   generally  small  and   poor.   Stock- 
A  stock  joke  is  that  a  German  tourist  wrote,  "The  Croa-  raismg 
tians  have  small,  horse-like  creatures  called  Konje," — 
konje  being   the   Croatian   word   for   horses.     We   saw 
women  ploughing  with  oxen  that  came  only  to  their  waists. 
The  sheep,  too,  are  poor,  and  even  if  a  better  breed  is 
introduced  it  is  said  to  degenerate,  the  wool  soon  be 
coming  poor  and  harsh  in  quality.     The  government, 

*  Lika-Krbava  County: 

Arable  land 159,000  yokes 

Meadow 89,000 

Pasture 282,000 

Woods 464,000 

Karst 81,000 


1,075,000  yokes 

A  yoke  is  less  than  an  acre  and  a  half,  or  more  precisely  1.42  acres. 
12 


i78 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Varasdin 
County 


Slavonia 


Growth  a!nd 
grounds  of 
emigration 


however,  has  agricultural  stations  for  experimentation, 
breeding  and  teaching  of  methods,  and  is  making  efforts 
to  improve  the  stock  both  of  animals  and  plants;  and 
the  public  schools  often  have  gardens  where  the  children 
are^  taught  the  care  of  fruit  trees  and  how  to  graft 
them. 

The  population  has  sustained  a  great  blow  in  the 
government  prohibition  of  keeping  goats.  They  for 
merly  did  much  damage  to  woods,  and  in  this  limestone 
region,  which  so  easily  becomes  denuded,  this  is  a  very 
serious  matter.  It  might  have  been  regulated,  however, 
without  cutting  off  altogether  what  had  been  a  very 
important  part  of  the  living  of  the  peasant.  We  were 
told  that  the  military  authorities  notice  a  falling  off  in 
physique  of  the  men,  ascribed  to  lack  of  the  wholesome 
and  strengthening  goat's  milk  formerly  available. 

Of  late  years,  emigration  has  been  extending  north  into 
the  Varasdin  district,  which  till  comparatively  recently 
remained  almost  unaffected.  It  is  a  poor  region,  and 
the  most  densely  populated  part  of  the  country,  with 
209  inhabitants  to  the  square  kilometer  of  agricultural 
land  where  Lika-Krbava  has  135.*  Emigrants  do  not 
go  from  the  poorest  parts  of  this  district,  however. 

Another  new  field  for  emigration  is  the  eastern  coun 
ties;  that  is,  Slavonia.  Here  conditions  are  just  the 
reverse;  the  land  is  rich  and  thinly  populated,  with 
(in  Syrmium)  only  87  persons  to  the  square  kilometer  of 
agricultural  land.  There  have  been  attempts  to  colonize 
this  district  from  Hungary  and  from  the  Varasdin  district 
in  Croatia,  but  for  some  reason  population  does  not  seem 
to  flow  thither  as  it  might  be  expected  to  do. 

Figures  in  regard  to  Croatian  emigration  are  given  in 
some  detail  in  Appendix  XIII.  Here  we  see  that  while 
in  1899  only  Agram  county  and  Modrus-Fiume  county 
sent  over  a  thousand  emigrants  to  North  America  (and 

*  The  figures  are  for  1894,  see  "Die  Konigreiche  Kroatien  und 
Slavonien  auf  der  Milleniums — Landesausstellung  *  *  *  in 
Budapest,  1896,"  page  33. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA 


179 


neither  of  them  as  many  as  1500),  by  1907  each  of  the 
eight  counties  which  compose  the  country  sent  over  a 
thousand  emigrants  and  Agram  county  over  5000,  the 
total  rising  from  2()oo_jjL~iSQQto  22,800  in  1907.  We  see 
too  that  the  emigrants  were  mainly  young  men  and 
most  of  them  engaged  in  agriculture. 

The  general  census  figures,  as  to  occupation  and  land 
and  size  of  land  holdings,  some  of  which  are  given  in 
the  same  Appendix,  also  throw  light  on  the  economic 
causes  of  the  emigration  movement.  We  see  for  instance 
that  82  per  cent  of  the  total  population  of  the 
country  depend  on  agriculture,  taking  this  to  include 
forestry  and  stockraising,  that  87  per  cent  of  those 
engaged  in  agriculture  are  either  members  of  Zadrugas, 
or  individual  owners  and  members  of  their  families, 
and  that  almost  all  the  land  is  held  in  small  or  dwarf 
holdings;  indeed,  out  of  over  400,000  properties  only 
930  (or  2  in  a  thousand)  are  of  medium  size  and  only 
209  are  large. 

Not  only  is  the  land  thus  subdivided,  but  the  propor 
tion  of  tillable  land  is  often  small;  much  is  in  so-called 
pasture  and  this  is  often  little  more  than  sheer  stony 
waste  land. 

A  minor  cause  of  trouble  in  Croatia  seems  to  be,  as  Loans  and 
among  the  Slovaks  and  in  Galicia,  the  credit  situation. 
When  money  has  to  be  borrowed,  as  it  often  must  be, 
it  is  to  be  had  only  at  usurious  rates.  The  Croatian  does 
not,  like  the  Galician  and  the  Slovak,  complain  of  Jews, 
who  seem  to  play  no  r61e  in  the  country;  but  capital  is 
scarce,  and  what  is  available  is  mainly  invested  in 
so-called  savings  banks,  which  are  really  companies  for 
conducting  a  loan  business,  and  are  said  to  pay  enormous 
dividends  to  the  stockholders.  Industrial  enterprise, 
which  cannot  offer  such  large  returns,  is  unable  to  com 
pete,  and  starves  for  want  of  capital. 

According  to  an  Agram  informant  the  situation  is  as 
follows.  A  peasant  must  pay  12  per  cent  for  a  loan, 
though  a  merchant  may  borrow  at  6  per  cent.  He 


usury 


l8o  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

might  get  better  terms  from  the  local  branch  of  the 
Mortgage  Bank  at  Budapest,  but  this  makes  no  loan 
under  about  $200,  and  a  peasant  is  apt  to  want  about 
$40 — for  instance,  on  the  occasion  of  the  break-up  of  a 
Zadruga,  when  he  must  fit  himself  out  for  farming  his 
share  independently. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  a  man  in  this  situation  wanting 
$40.  He  secures  a  loan  from  the  savings  bank  on  his 
note,  for  which  he  must  get  two  or  three  endorsements. 
To  each  person  who  obliges  him  in  this  way  he  gives  a 
trifle,  if  only  a  glass  of  wine;  this  might  cost  $2.40.  Then 
a  discount  of  $1.80  for  the  next  quarter  is  deducted  at 
once,  so  that  he  starts  with  $35.80  in  hand.  At  the  end 
of  three  months  he  must  pay  interest,  and  repay  at  least 
10  per  cent  of  the  capital.  If  the  loan  was  made  in  the 
autumn,  no  money  has  come  in  at  the  end  of  the  three 
months,  and  he  must  secure  a  new  loan,  also  bearing 
interest.  The  process  may  need  to  be  repeated  again 
at  the  next  quarter.  Not  till  autumn  is  there  any 
money  coming  in.  The  proverb  is,  "The  peasant  turns 
himself  once  in  a  year." 

This  sort  of  thing  sends  many  to  America,  but  for  the 
journey  they  must  borrow  again,  so  that  a  man  may  well 
owe  $200  by  the  time  he  arrives.  Sometimes  the  money 
is  advanced  by  an  individual.  One  man  borrowed  $40 
of  an  old  woman  who  asked  $60  back  at  the  end  of  three 
months!  She  kept  her  money  in  a  stocking,  and  it  was 
a  mark  of  confidence  that  she  admitted  that  she  had  it, 
still  more  that  she  loaned  it.  To  her  there  was  nothing 
excessive  in  the  rate  that  she  wanted.  It  was  indeed  a 
pretium  affectionis.  Now  Raffeisen  banks  are  coming 
into  being,  a  very  important  step  forward. 

Such  is  the  account  of  the  credit  situation  in  Croatia, 
given  me  by  an  Agram  gentleman. 

Effects  of  Croatian  emigration  is,  in  the  main  points,  similar  to 

emigration      ^e  Qa}ician  anc[  Slovak  emigration  previously  described. 

The  situation  of  the  peasants,  the  going  abroad  to  earn 

money,  the  return  of  a  considerable  number  (how  large 


BISHOP  STROSSMAYER 

The  Croatian  patriot,  saint  and  patron  of  art  and  letters. 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  l8l 

a  part  no  one  knows),  the  misfit  of  the  returned  emi 
grant — all  of  these  things  recur  here. 

The  man  who  has  been  to  America,  we  were  told,  is 
easily  recognized.  "You  can  tell  him  as  far  off  as  you 
can  see  him."  He  carries  himself  more  independently, 
he  works  better,  he  is  more  interested  in  education,  but 
he  is  unfitted  for  the  old  life.  One  man,  for  instance, 
went  out  a  mere  laborer  and  returned  a  skilled  work 
man,  but  he  was  not  content  to  stay.  Another  story 
was  of  a  man  who  was  seized  with  such  an  uncontrolla 
ble  longing  for  America  that  he  got  up  in  the  night  and 
ran  away,  leaving  wife  and  children. 

Too  many,  however,  return  worn  out,  though  it  may 
be  with  some  money.  In  America  they  worked  harder 
than  at  home,  and  lived  little  or  no  better.  They  spent 
themselves  to  the  utmost  under  the  stimulus  of  the 
"boss,"  the  climate,  and  most  of  all  of  their  own  ambi 
tion.  A  Croatian  gentleman  said  to  me,  sadly,  "The 
Americans  know  how  to  save  themselves,  but  our  men 
are  not  so  clever." 

The  Croatians,  too,  seem  to  make  much  the  same  re 
port  about  America  that  we  heard  elsewhere.  A  curious 
story  is,  however,  quite  widely  rife  in  Croatia,  and  the  re 
turned  emigrant  seems  to  be  responsible  for  it.  It  is 
reported,  namely,  that  in  America  it  is  allowable  to 
marry  experimentally  for  a  term  of  years  (generally  set, 
I  think,  at  five).  Whether  this  is  a  bona  fide  impression 
made  by  American  divorces,  or  whether  it  is  a  mere 
traveler's  tale,  or  possibly  a  convenient  cover  for  Amer 
ican  experiences  of  their  own,  I  cannot  say. 

In  Croatia,  too,  the  money  that  flows  in  from  emi-  Remittances 
grants  is  very  considerable.     I  was  informed  from  a  most  ^^1™° 
reliable  source  that  in  the  year  1903  America  sent  prob 
ably  $10,000,000  to  Croatia-Slavonia.      The  'post  office 
alone  transmitted  $4,600,000.     It  is,  however,  only  fair  to 
notice  that  a  part  of  this  inflow  is  balanced  by  an  outgo ; 
that  a    considerable   part,  in   fact,  goes  to   repay  loans 
contracted  to  cover  the  expense  of  emigration.     Since 


182 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Balance  in 
favor  of 
Europe 


Standards 
of  peasant 
life  raised 


Croatian  emigrants  go  mainly  to  seek  temporary  em 
ployment,  not  to  settle,  they  carry  little  capital  with 
them;  nevertheless,  the  actual  drain  is  considerable. 
In  1905,  for  instance,  according  to  our  immigration  re 
ports,  1 22 1  Croatian  and  Slovenian  immigrants  brought 
$50"  or  more  each  into  the  country,  or  $61,000  at  least. 
If  we  allow  only  $15  apiece  for  the  31,710  others  who 
brought  under  $50,  it  makes  $475,650  more,  or  together 
well  over  half  a  million  dollars  of  cash  in  hand  on  enter 
ing  the  country,  for  this  group  alone.  If  to  this  we  add 
about  $50  as  expense  of  journey  and  outfit  for  each  of 
the  35,104  arrivals,  we  get  $175,520  more,  or  over 
$700,000  in  all. 

This  outflow  of  money  from  Europe  through  emigra 
tion  is  a  fact  which  is  generally  ignored  by  American  and 
exaggerated  by  European  writers,  but  it  is  obvious  that 
the  balance  of  this  trade  is  in  favor  of  Europe;  that 
through  the  emigrants  more  wealth  flows  in  than  they 
withdraw. 

This  influx  of  money  naturally  makes  itself  felt.  Tile 
replaces  thatch,  taxes  and  debts  are  paid,  field  is  added 
to  field,  better  tools  and  more  cattle  are  bought,  phyl 
loxera-smitten  vineyards  are  replaced  with  immune  vine 
stocks,  churches  are  built  and  adorned.  It  is  pleasing, 
too,  to  hear  of  cripples  supported  by  contributions  from 
fellow- villagers  at  work  in  America.  After  the  riots  in 
Agram  some  years  ago,  some  of  the  political  prisoners 
also  received  aid  from  the  same  source. 

Another  result  is  that  people  live  better.  The  price 
of  poultry  has  risen  because  the  peasants  now  eat  it 
themselves.  They  will  pay  $8.00  or  $10  for  a  suit  of 
"European  clothes."  Sewing  machines  seem  to  be  not 
uncommon,  and  are  widely  advertised.  Town  improve 
ments  are  also  undertaken.  I  will  instance  a  specific 
case.  Here  in  a  parish  of  4000  souls,  $9500  was  received 
in  one  year  from  America,  besides  $100  or  so  sent  to  the 
church.  A  good  town  water  supply  had  been  put  in, 
not  piped  to  the  houses  indeed  but  available  at  public 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  183 

hydrants;  street  lamps  had  been  put  up,  and  a  quite  im 
posing  building  for  a  savings  bank  was  in  process  of 
erection. 

Except  to  employers  the  movement  is  financially  a  Wages  and 
godsend.  Wages  rise,  and  so  does  the  price  of  land. 
The  rise  in  land  values  is  in  fact  often  excessive.  In 
some  parts  of  Lika-Krbava,  for  instance,  the  soil  is  poor 
and  stony,  but  there  is  no  other  channel  for  investment, 
and  the  man  who  has  acquired  a  little  money  must  and 
will  buy  land.  Competition,  together  with  speculation, 
has  run  prices  up  so  that  sometimes  where  arable  land 
formerly  cost  $60  to  $80  a  yoke  it  now  costs  up  to  $400, 
and  meadow  land  is  dearer  still. 

In  this  county  a  very  interesting  official  inquiry  was  Effects  of 
made  as  to  the  effects  of  emigration.     The  civil  popula-  j 
tion  was  208,000.     In  1902,  5,619  went  to  America  and  Krbava 
436  returned.     It  must  be  remembered  that  this  repre-  County 
sents  an  early  phase  of  the  movement,  and  that  few 
would  be  coming  back  so  soon.     In  1903  it  was  estimated 
that  8000  were  in  America.     In  that  year  2795  borrowed 
money  with  which  to  go,  and  4317  sent  money  home, 
amounting,  so  far  as  known,  to  about  $560,860,  or  not 
quite  $130  from  each  sender  on  an  average.     With  this 
money   4116   homes  were   bettered — by   paying   debts, 
buying   more   land    or    making   improvements.     Seven 
homes  were  reported  as  impoverished,  and  twenty-seven 
as  ruined  (abandoried?). 

It  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  clothe  these  dry  bones  of 
statistics  with  the  flesh  and  blood  of  Miss  Gazvoda's 
true  story. 

NOTES  FROM  MY  VILLAGE 

BY  A  CROATIAN  SCHOOL  TEACHER 

Today  they  are  telling  in  the  village  that  fifteen  are  going 
tomorrow  to  Fiume  by  the  early  train — men,  women  and  young 
girls  on  their  way  to  America.  They  were  all  blessed  by  the 
priest  after  mass.  The  prayer  for  their  happiness  away  from 
home  was  very  moving.  All  who  knelt  before  the  altar  were 
pale,  struggling  against  the  tears  in  eyes  which  may  never  see 


184  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

this  church  again.  On  this  consecrated  spot  they  took  leave  of 
the  fatherland,  our  dear  Croatia,  who  cannot  feed  her  children 
because  she  is  not  free  nor  the  mistress  of  her  own  money.  She 
must  let  them  go  among  strangers  in  order  that  those  who  re 
main  may  live,  they  and  their  children  and  their  old  people. 
And  the  old  people  die  in  peace  because  they  have  hope;  the 
little,  ones  shall  fare  better  than  ever  they  have  done. 

This  morning  all  went  early  to  confession.  With  God  they 
go  safer  on  their  long  journey.  Toward  evening  they  can  be 
seen  hurrying  from  house  to  house  taking  leave  of  those  that 
they  love.  Who  can  say  that  there  will  ever  be  another  meet 
ing  for  them?  It  is  very  late  before  they  have  finished  these 
visits  and  the  family  waits  for  them  with  impatience.  With 
impatience,  how  else  when  this  evening  or  rather  the  few  hours 
still  left  are  so  short?  This  is  the  last  supper  at  home.  There 
is  no  going  to  bed,  for  at  three  they  must  start  for  the  station 
as  the  train  goes  at  four.  It  is  so  sad  to  hear  them  driving 
through  the  village  singing  a  song  which  expresses  all  the  feelings 
of  their  sore  hearts. 

The  saddest  moment  of  all  is  the  departure.  The  train  has 
come,  they  must  get  on  board.  How  many  tears  and  sobs  and 
kisses  in  our  little  forest  and  rock-bound  station.  Friends  go 
with  them  to  Fiume — all  but  the  children  and  the  old  folks  who 
stay  in  the  village  alone. 

In  Fiume  the  girls  buy  what  they  need  for  the  journey  and  a 
little  gold  crucifix.  That  must  be  bought  in  the  fatherland. 
So  must  rings,  too.  Often  the  parents  buy  the  betrothal  rings 
for  their  sons  and  daughters  who  marry  in  America  and  send 
them  to  them.  Faith  and  love  come  from  the  homeland. 

Finally  at  the  ship  good  byes  must  be  said,  the  last.  One 
little  girl  whose  older  sister  was  going  by  train  to  Vienna,  had 
gone  with  her  to  Fiume.  But  when  the  train  was  about  to  go 
the  little  one  flung  herself  down  upon  the  ground  in  her  distress 
and  shrieked  terribly.  Everyone  tried  to  pacify  her  but  she 
pressed  her  little  hands  over  her  eyes  to  hide  the  engine  from 
her  sight,  and  answered,  "It  is  easy  for  you  to  talk,  but  this 
hateful  engine  is  robbing  me  of  my  sweet  sister."  She  was  quite 
ill  with  suffering  and  they  had  much  ado  to  get  her  away.  But 
it  is  hardest  for  the  mothers  who  let  their  daughters  or  their 
sons  go. 

Very  late,  after  midnight,  people  come  home — alone.  Now 
come  quiet  tears  and  prayers  that  God  may  grant  the  travelers 
a  safe  arrival.  With  what  anxiety  and  joy  do  they  wait  for 
the  news  from  the  agent  that  their  dear  ones  have  reached  New 
York  in  safety.  There  relatives  are  already  expecting  them  and 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  185 

the  journey  can  be  peacefully  continued  in  their  company. 
Our  people  generally  go  to  Michigan.  In  one  town  there  are 
so  many  that  our  people  call  it  "New  Lipa." 

The  money  for  the  journey  always  comes  from  relatives  or 
friends  to  whom  all  is  honestly  repaid  later.  The  young  fellows 
try  to  save  the  money  to  bring  over  a  young  girl.  When  she 
comes  to  America — generally  she  does  not  know  her  suitor — she 
is  married.  If  she  is  unwilling,  not  finding  him  to  her  liking,  she 
must  pay  back  the  money,  but  it  very  often  happens  that  an 
other  lad  pays  it  for  her  and  takes  her  for  his  wife  instead. 

Many  girls  are  very  fortunate  in  America.  For  instance 
this  very  day  a  family  is  coming  home.  The  wife  was  poor  and 
ill-favored.  Relatives  sent  her  money  for  the  journey  to  Amer 
ica  and  there  she  married  a  poor  and  very  humble  sort  of  man. 
By  work  and  saving  they  have  got  together  $6,000  in  thirteen 
years.  They  have  six  children  and  with  them  are  now  returning. 
In  those  days  she  was  poor,  ridiculed,  alone;  now  she  is  well- 
to-do,  respected,  the  mother  of  a  family.  The  women  are 
full  of  curiosity  about  her.  At  noon  they  were  all  in  the  street 
in  hopes  of  seeing  her  but  in  vain.  She  and  her  family  are 
staying  in  Fiume  and  will  come  to-night,  perhaps.  My  house 
keeper  is  her  godmother  and  so  awaits  her  happy  godchild  with 
much  pleasure  for  she  is  to  offer  her,  for  purchase,  a  large  meadow 
which  once  belonged  to  the  parents  of  her  godchild,  but  which 
they  were  obliged  to  sell.  I  think  that  would  be  a  very  pleasant 
feeling,  to  be  able  to  buy  back  again  a  piece  of  land  lost  in  one's 
father's  time,  and  to  let  the  happy  grandchildren  jump  and 
play  about  where  once  the  poor  grandfather  worked  and  whence 
misfortune  drove  him  away  to  die. 

My  housekeeper,  who  is  already  sixty-five,  cannot  tell  with 
out  crying  how  it  used  to  be  here  in  the  good  old  days.  Thirty- 
four  years  ago  there  was  no  railroad.  Our  splendid  highway,  the 
"Lujziane,"  even  then  a  century  old,  saw  such  activity  as  will 
never  return.  All  travel  was  by  this  road  and  our  people  were 
happy  because  they  always  had  the  opportunity  to  work  and  to 
live  in  peace.  In  one  house  they  kept  ten  servants,  men  and 
maids.  Day  and  night  the  teams  with  their  heavy  loads  were 
on  the  highway.  Labor  was  very  cheap,  a  man  got  about  thir 
teen  cents  and  a  woman  six  cents  a  day.  To  be  sure  they  had 
good  food  besides,  bread,  meat  and  wine  as  much  as  they  wanted, 
and  the  children  of  the  women  servants  were  fed,  too.  The 
wages  were  low  as  I  have  said,  yet  the  people  were  contented. 
Some  got  very  rich,  but  the  poor,  too,  were  well  provided  for. 

Twenty  years  ago  two  men  went  to  America  from  here,  the 
first  from  our  place  to  go.  Now  nearly  half  the  village  is  in 


l86  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

America.  It  is  hard  to  till  the  fields  for  there  are  no  workers  to 
be  had.  Whoever  has  strength  and  youth  is  at  work  in  America. 
At  home  are  only  the  old  men  and  women  and  the  young  wives 
with  their  children.  Every  wife  has  much  to  do  for  herself. 
Only  poor  girls  work  in  the  fields.  "And  they  must  be  paid  a 
crown  (twenty  cents)  a  day,"  sighs  my  housekeeper  and  thinks 
of  -the  better  days  of  old. 

The  women  help  one  another  and  live  from  day  to  day, 
dragging  along  waiting  for  letters  and  money.  The  money 
generally  comes  in  autumn.  Everything  is  bought  on  credit 
through  the  year;  the  dealer  waits,  for  he  knows  that  in  the 
autumn  it  will  all  be  paid.  If  not  then,  danger  threatens  the 
little  house  or  at  least  the  cow  in  the  stall. 

At  Christmas  and  Easter,  too,  and  at  mid-summer  presents 
of  a  few  dollars  come  to  the  fortunate  ones.  Others  who  have 
a  hard  lot  wait  months  and  years  and  never  receive  anything. 
The  husband  forgets  his  wife,  the  son  his  father  and  mother, 
the  brother  his  sisters  and  brothers.  The  new  world  with  new 
enjoyments  silences  his  conscience  and  hardens  his  heart.  Oh, 
how  bitterly  those  at  home  feel  this!  They  not  only  suffer;  they 
are  ashamed  that  they  have  been  forgotten. 

One  often  sees  jolly  fellows  at  a  dance  and  in  gay  company 
which  they  did  not  enjoy  at  home.  That  tempts  them  and  so 
one  and  another  is  lost.  If  a  relative  is  near  it  is  not  so  danger 
ous,  for  the  scamp  is  under  some  control  and  one  hopes  he  will 
become  reasonable.  But  when  one  who  is  quite  alone  gives 
himself  up  to  the  joys  of  the  world  then  it  goes  hard.  Thank 
God  such  cases  are  very  rare  with  us.  If  one  goes  astray  he 
amends  even  after  years  and  is  not  lost. 

Near  me  lives  a  woman  with  her  husband  and  the  wife  of  her 
younger  son  who  came  home  last  year.  Her  elder  son  is  still  in 
America.  He  went  twelve  or  thirteen  years  ago,  leaving  at 
home  his  wife  and  two  children,  a  boy  and  girl.  His  tempera 
ment  was  gay  and  weak.  He  soon  forgot  father  and  mother, 
wife  and  children.  He  did  not  write  and  sent  nothing  for  the 
support  of  his  family.  His  poor  young  wife  took  it  much  to 
heart  and  died  of  a  decline.  His  mother  had  her  photographed 
as  she  lay  on  her  bier  and  sent  the  picture  to  her  hard-hearted 
son.  He  sent  it  back.  His  own  mother  cursed  him,  but  he  did 
not  change. 

The  little  girl  was  already  eight  and  the  son  nine  when  he 
sent  a  letter — the  children  were  to  come  to  him.  He  sent  the 
money,  too.  The  children  went  accompanied  by  the  sister  of 
his  dead  wife.  When  they  arrived  he  fell  in  love  with  her  and 
married  her.  Now  the  poor  children  have  their  aunt  for  their 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  187 

stepmother  and  are  very  well  off.  The  man  has  changed  greatly 
and  is  very  watchful  of  his  son,  perhaps  for  fear  that  he  might 
become  as  he  himself  once  was.  The  soul  of  the  dead  wife,  I 
think,  is  satisfied. 

Another  woman  was  also  very  unhappy.  Her  husband  left 
her  with  six  children  and  went  to  America.  At  first  he  sent  news 
of  himself,  but  after  a  while  he  quite  forgot  his  dear  ones.  A 
relative  of  his  wife's,  who  was  also  in  America,  had  got  him  in 
her  net  and  led  him  astray.  For  years  the  wife  and  children 
starved.  Once  she  tried  to  take  her  life  but  was  saved.  The 
eldest  daughter,  a  young  girl  as  pretty  as  a  picture,  wrote  con 
tinually  to  her  father  and  brought  it  about  that  he  sent  her 
money  for  the  journey.  She  set  forth  with  the  firmest  intention 
of  saving  him  from  his  danger  and  restoring  him  to  her  mother. 
And  so  it  was.  The  man  quite  reformed.  Today  his  wife  and 
all  his  children  are  already  with  him.  It  goes  well  with  them. 
All  that  his  poor  wife  suffered  is  forgotten.  The  daughter  has 
made  a  happy  marriage  and  is  living  contentedly.  Last  year 
I  saw  a  big  photograph  of  a  wedding.  The  whole  family  are  in 
the  picture  and  I  was  amazed  to  see  how  stout  the  poor  wife  had 
grown  and  how  happy  she  looked. 

Once  I  was  traveling  third  class  on  the  train  from  Fiume 
because  I  like  to  hear  the  talk  of  the  common  people.  One 
learns  more  in  such  a  trip  than  in  the  best  school.  In  the  same 
compartment  with  me  was  a  woman,  young  but  very  sad.  She 
was  from  the  village  next  ours,  the  place  where  the  chair  factory 
is  for  which  our  women  and  girls  make  the  cane  seats  by  which 
they  earn  their  living.  She  had  been  in  Fiume  to  sell  something. 
The  empty  basket  stood  by  her.  It  was  large  and  must  have 
been  very  heavy  when  it  was  full.  In  talking  with  me  she  gave 
me  a  picture  of  her  sad  life. 

She  was  very  poor.  Her  father  had  long  been  dead.  Her 
mother  was  ailing  and  was  very  anxious  about  her  daughter's 
future.  Then  came  a  widower,  no  longer  young,  and  tried  to 
persuade  her  that  she  ought  to  give  him  her  daughter.  But 
the  daughter  could  not  make  up  her  mind  to  it.  "He  did  not 
please  me."  But  the  mother  said,  "Take  him,  my  child,  and 
we  shall  both  be  provided  for."  So  she  married  him.  Soon  he 
went  to  America.  She  was  left  alone  with  her  little  daughter, 
for  her  mother  died  soon  after.  The  child  is  now  nine  years  old 
and  goes  to  school.  But  the  father  does  nothing  at  all  for  his 
family.  More  fortunate  children  often  strike  the  poor  little 
girl  when  she  is  going  home.  Then  she  says  to  her  mother, 
"Mama,  all  the  children  have  a  father  and  nobody  dares  strike 
them.  Why  haven't  I  a  father?"  Then  the  poor  woman 


l88  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

weeps  quietly.  In  America  the  husband  leads  a  jolly  life. 
More  than  that,  he  borrows  money  from  people  and  when  they 
want  it  back  he  says,  "My  wife  will  pay."  And  so  people  from 
America  keep  coming  to  her  with  bills  from  her  husband.  I 
tried  to  console  her.  Heaven  knows  whether  she  will  ever  be 
happy. 

What  a  joy  the  young  husband  in  America  feels  when  his 
wife  sends  him  a  picture  of  their  first  baby.  One  wrote  home, 
"I  can't  write  much  this  time  for  looking  at  my  dear  child  as  it 
smiles  at  me  from  the  picture."  He  is  a  locksmith  and  has  been 
in  America  a  year.  Two  months  ago  his  wife  and  baby  safely 
joined  him  there.  She  writes  how  hard  it  is  for  her  to  wear  a 
hat.  None  of  the  common  people  wear  them  here.  But  her 
husband  says  "You  may  live  with  me  for  years  but  I  shall  not 
go  out  with  you  unless  you  wear  a  hat."  So  the  woman  must 
be  fine.  People  require  it  there. 

Many  girls  however  take  especial  delight  in  the  hat  that  they 
are  to  wear  in  America.  But  photographs  are  the  best  proof  to 
what  an  extent  dress  is  carried  in  America.  One  sees  the  most 
beautiful  hats  and  dresses  on  our  women.  "It  has  to  be  so. 
It  is  the  custom  here,"  they  write.  But  one  must  marvel  at 
how  fine  they  are.  And  when  they  return  they  look  so  entirely 
different.  They  know  better  how  to  behave  and  show  that 
they  have  learned  something.  All  know  English  even  if  not 
quite  correctly.  All  Slavs,  especially  Croatians,  have  a  great 
talent  for  languages.  Our  peasants  learn  English  very  fast. 
Years  ago  when  the  first  letter  came  from  America  from  the  two 
earliest  emigrants,  it  was  a  hard  matter  to  get  it  read,  for  as 
neither  of  them  could  write  someone  else  had  written  for  them 
but  in  English.  The  poor  wife  had  to  hunt  the  neighborhood 
over  until  she  found  an  official  on  a  railroad  who  explained  the 
letter  to  her  after  a  fashion.  I  have  the  story  from  my  house 
keeper  and  she  tells  how  the  poor  wife  who  had  waited  months 
for  news  moved  heaven  and  earth  to  get  the  letter  read.  Now 
there  would  be  no  difficulty.  There  are  plenty  in  the  village  who 
understand  English.  The  children  attend  English  schools  while 
they  are  in  America  and  derive  great  benefit  from  it  when  they 
are  grown  up. 

The  women  who  are  left  here  alone  almost  always  remain 
faithful  to  their  husbands.  It  is  a  rare  case  when  now  and  then 
one  forgets  herself.  But  if  it  does  occur  the  men  show  far  more 
feeling  and  self-control  than  one  might  expect.  A  common 
peasant  in  such  circumstances  has  often  more  strength  and 
insight  than  an  intelligent  man  from  the  better  classes. 

In  one  neighborhood  a  man  married  and  went  soon  after  to 


EMIGRATION    FROM    CROATIA  189 

America.  His  young  wife  remained  with  his  parents.  His  un 
married  brother  also  made  one  of  the  household.  Suddenly 
a  misfortune.  She  bore  him  a  child.  The  parents  drove  her 
from  the  house  and  wrote  her  husband  how  matters  stood. 
She  went  to  Fiume  as  a  nurse  and  supported  herself  and  her 
child.  The  husband  not  unnaturally  was  furious  and  wrote 
her  that  she  need  not  expect  him  to  return  to  her.  But  with 
time  he  forgave  her  all  in  the  goodness  of  his  heart  and  wrote 
for  her  to  come  to  him.  She  answered,  "I  cannot  leave  my 
child."  Then  he  wrote  again,  "Come  and  bring  the  child  with 
you,"  and  he  at  once  sent  her  the  tickets  both  for  herself  and 
for  the  child. 

She  made  the  journey  in  dread.  "He  will  kill  me";  that 
was  her  only  thought.  But  when  he  met  her  she  could  not  be 
lieve  her  eyes.  He  first  took  the  baby  into  his  arms  and  then 
embraced  her.  They  are  living  peacefully  together.  All  is 
forgotten.  He  loves  the  child  dearly,  for  they  have  none  of 
their  own.  Always  when  he  comes  from  the  mine  the  poor  child 
is  waiting  for  him  like  an  angel.  How  much  magnanimity  this 
simple  peasant  has.  But  the  people  here  are  very  religious  and 
follow  the  words  of  Christ,  "Judge  not." 

What  especially  pleases  them  is  the  respect  in  which  workers 
are  held  in  America.  They  are  better  cared  for,  too,  mentally. 
They  have  three  or  four  Croatian  papers,  they  have  organizations 
and  learn  much  that  they  bring  home  later.  They  have  their 
priests  and  churches,  but  as  yet  only  two  Croatian  schools. 
All  is  founded  by  the  contributions  of  workingmen.  They  send 
a  great  deal  home  to  the  churches,  too;  they  are  supporting  a 
poor  man,  and  in  1903,  when  there  were  the  disturbances  in 
Croatia  about  the  Hungarian  flag  and  the  Hungarian  inscrip 
tions  on  the  railroad  stations,  our  brothers  in  America  sacrificed 
a  great  deal  for  the  support  of  the  families  of  those  under  arrest. 
They  love  Croatia  dearly.  Each  one  longs  for  home  and  wants 
to  die  here.  We  Slavs  are  so  soft-natured.  Homesickness  is 
our  disease.  On  account  of  it  many  Croatians  cannot  hold  out 
and  return  home  too  soon. 

The  talk  is  all  of  America.  Our  newspapers  write  so  much 
what  a  bad  thing  it  is  for  whole  families  to  go  there  as  they  do. 
But  it  is  no  use.  People  must  eat.  The  stones  are  hard.  There 
is  too  little  land.  The  government  does  nothing  for  the  good 
of  the  people.  There  are  no  factories,  there  is  no  building,  no 
mining.  So  how  can  people  live  and  pay  taxes?  And  if  the 
taxes  are  not  paid  the  cow  is  taken  from  the  stall,  the  pillows 
from  under  the  head. 

In  Slavonia  there  is  no  need  of  emigration,  for  there  the  land 


IpO  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

is  fertile  and  people  can  make  a  good  living.  But  here  in  the 
mountain  district  and  on  the  coast,  in  Lika,  too,  and  in  Dalmatia, 
people  have  to  go  to  America. 

Only  American  capital  could  lessen  the  stream  of  emigration. 
Croatia  is  a  beautiful  country.  Our  mountains  doubtless  hold 
great  treasures,  but  we  lack  the  money  with  which  to  seek  them. 
Only  American  capital  could  bring  them  to  light.  We  have  the 
beautiful  sea,  the  lovely  Plitvica  lakes  and  the  fine  district  about 
Agram,  but  we  cannot  make  use  of  these  beauties  as  a  rich  and 
free  people  could  do.  We  have  a  sufficient  income,  but  as  a 
public  man  has  said,  "Our  pockets  are  in  the  Hungarian  !trou- 
sers."  The  Hungarians  have  our  money  and  give  us  just  enough 
to  keep  us  alive.  Only  a  free  and  independent  nation  can 
progress.  We  are  like  dead  capital. 

But  we  hope  for  our  national  resurrection.  So  many  have 
already  died  in  this  hope.  It  is  our  ideal,  our  dearest  one. 
For  this  Zriny  and  Frankopany  died.  The  innocent  blood  of 
our  best  sons  must  at  last  bring  us  good  fortune. 


ON  THE  COAST  OF  THE  ADRIATIC 

1.  Zengg,  once  a  resort  of  pirates.  Note  the  Castle  of  Uskoks  on  height  to  the  left,  and 
the  row  of  warehouses  built  to  protect  shipping  from  the  Bora,  and  the  karst  character  of  the 
country.  2.  View  near  Ragusa. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  ADRIATIC  COAST  OF  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

The  very  names  that  belong  to  all  this  region — Istria,  The  coast 
Dalmatia,  Montenegro,  Ragusa,  Cattaro  and  the  rest—  and  islands 
are  like  "magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam,"  and  it 
is  hard  to  settle  down  to  the  prosaic  facts  of  emigration. 
At  first  sight  the  country  does  not  seem  Slavic.     Italy 
with  her  architecture  and  her  contagious  grace  of  life, 
and  Turkey,  with  costumes  and  manners  of  the  near 
East,  overlay  to  the  eyes  the  Slavic  substance. 

We  naturally  approach  things  on  their  most  familiar 
side,  and  just  as  we  are  apt  to  know  only  a  Germanized 
form  of  Slavic  names — Agram  for  Zagrdb,  Lemberg  for 
Lw6w — so  in  this  region  it  is  the  Italian  forms  of  the 
names  that  are  familiar.  We  say  Fiume,  not  Rjeka; 
Ragusa,  not  Dubrovnik;  Montenegro,  not  Crnagora. 

But  this  nomenclature,  the  Venetian  aspect  of  the  cities, 
and  the  Italian  spoken  in  the  hotels  are  misleading.  The 
Italian  element  is  indeed  prevalent  in  restricted  parts  of 
Goricia-Gradisca  and  of  Istria,  in  Fiume,  and  especially 
in  and  about  Trieste ;  but  for  the  rest,  the  population  of 
the  whole  Adriatic  coast  of  Austria  and  Hungary  is 
essentially  Servo-Croatian.  In  Dalmatia,  which  the 
tourist  is  prone  to  regard  as  a  second  and  more  pictur 
esque  Italy,  over  97  per  cent  of  the  people  speak  Croatian, 
or  Servian,  which  is  the  same  language  written  with  a 
different  alphabet. 

This  shore,  from  above  Nabresina  at  the  head  of  the 
Gulf  of  Trieste,  to  a  point  beyond  the  lovely  Bocche  di 
Cattaro  or  about  as  far  south  as  Rome,  stretches  in  an 
air  line  nearly  400  miles.  Apart  from  the  peninsula  of 
Istria,  we  are  dealing  with  a  narrow  strip  of  land,  broken 
by  fiords  and  bays,  fringed  with  islands,  large  and  small, 

191 


IQ2  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

and  backed  by  a  singularly  rugged  limestone  range, 
rich  in  noble  contours  and  violet  shadows.  It  is  a 
country  very  fertile  where  soil  is  to  be  had,  but  as  bare 
as  a  pile  of  broken  stone  where  the  Bora  (the  north 
wind)  sweeps  it,  or  the  salt  spray  driven  over  from  the 
sea  blights  it,  or  where  the  soil  has  been  washed  away  by 
the  rain.  The  mountains  have  been  robbed  of  their 
forests  to  make  piles  on  which  to  build  the  palaces  of 
Venice,  to  supply  masts  for  her  fleets,  or  for  more  prosaic 
uses  since.  Consequently  they  stand  largely  denuded  not 
only  of  vegetation  but  of  earth,  with  naked  limestone 
flanks  and  peaks,  and  the  streams  are  likely  to  be  roar 
ing  torrents  after  a  rain  and  dry  at  other  times. 

The  whole  shore  is  richer  in  charm  than  in  means  of 
livelihood,  and  of  late  is  becoming  a  favorite  resort  for 
tourists  and  health-seekers.  Abbazia,  frequented  the 
whole  year  round,  is  the  best-known  watering  place  as 
yet,  but  others  are  deservedly  coming  into  prominence., 
Its  magnificent  classic  ruins,  notable  among  which  are 
the  great  palace  of  Diocletian  at  Spalato  and  the  amphi 
theatre  at  Pola;  its  picturesque  Italianate  cities,  of 
which  Ragusa,  with  its  brilliant  political  and  literary 
history,  is  easily  first;  the  wonderful  fiord -like  beauty 
of  the  Bocche  di  Cattaro,  with  the  snows  of  Lovc"en, 
rosy  in  the  sunset,  inviting  to  an  exploration  of  Monte 
negro;  the  people  thronging  its  streets  and  by-ways 
in  various  and  always  picturesque  dress  in  which  Slavic 
and  Oriental  elements  are  curiously  intermingled,* — all 
these  make  a  whole  in  which  each  island,  each  town, 
each  valley  has  its  own  special  note. 

The  people          All  along  the  shore  and  the  islands  the  peasants  jy:e_ 
at  the  same  time  fishermen  and  bold  and  skilful  sailors. 

*  The  costume  I  will  not  attempt  to  describe  but  will  refer  the 
reader  to  the  many  books  of  Dalmatian  travel,  or  to  Mr.  Ernest 
Peixotto's  charmingly  illustrated  "Impressions  of  Dalmatia" 
in  Scribner's  Magazine  for  July,  1906,  or  the  photographs  and 
text  of  an  article  "  Where  East  meets  West:  Visit  to  picturesque 
Dalmatia,  Montenegro,  and  Bosnia,"  by  M.  C.  Coffin  in  the 
National  Geographic  Magazine  for  May,  1908. 


IN    ISTREA    AND    DALMATIA 

1.  In  Ragusa.  A  "Greek"  woman,  apparently  afraid  of  the  evil  eye^of^the  camera. 
2  and  4.  Dalmatian  women.  3.  Women  of  Castel  Muschio  on  the  island  of  VegKa,  off  Fiume, 
carrying  water  in  brass  vessels  on  their  heads  from  a  spring  far  below  the  town.  5  and£6.^Wait- 
ing  to  see  the  train  pass.  Dress  of  the  Canale  valley. 


THE    ADRIATIC    COAST    OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         193 

Unlike  most  Slavs,  they  are  also  capable  traders,  a  fact 
that  suggests  how  much  environment  and  example  have 
to  do  with  what  we  consider  national  traits.  Not  only 
does  their  land  produce  articles  admirably  adapted  for 
export — fish,  good  wine,  olive  oil,  fruit,  including  figs 
and  almonds,  and  of  late  years  the  well-known  "Dal 
matian  insect  powder,"  made  from  certain  camomile- 
like  flowers — but  for  centuries  the  coast  was  under  the 
rule  of  Venice,  the  queen  of  Eastern  commerce,  and  these 
Slavic  coast  folk  proved  apt  pupils. 

Physically  the  Dalmatian  is_a,^pl^ndid  "type.      Eth-  Physical 
nologists~noTe~witri"S"0"nie  surprise  the  exceptional  height  traits 
of  the  Dalmatians,  and  still  more  that  of  their  neigh 
bors  of  Bosnia-Herzegovina.     They  are  among  the  tall 
est  men  of  Europe,  and  not  only  tall  but  sturdy  and 
markedly  fine  in  their  carriage.     They  are  darker  than 
the  more  northern    Slavs    but    very    often   the    honest 
grey-blue  eyes  of  the  Slav  look  out  of  the  swarthy  or 
olive  face  of  the  Southerner.     Greek  blood,  too,  seems  to 
have  left  its  traces. 

I  wish  that  I  could  show  the  picture  of  an  old  man 
with  whom  I  talked  near  Ragusa,  but  he  refused  to  let 
me  photograph  him.  This  fear  of  a  camera  I  met  with 
more  than  once  here,  and  here  alone,  and  I  wondered  if 
it  could  be  a  trace  of  the  eastern  superstition  of  the  evil 
eye.  He  was  in  full  array — red  Dalmatian  cap,  baggy 
Turkish  trousers  of  blue,  a  series  of  embroidered  zouave 
jackets,  one  over  the  other,  and  a  wide  girdle  stuck  full 
of  various  articles  among  which  I  distinguished  only  a 
horn  knife-handle  and  a  richly  wrought  silver  sheath. 
His  long  pipe  he  held  in  his  fingers. 

He  was  a  fine  old  fellow,  grey -haired,  erect  and  friendly, 
speaking  English  remarkably  well — better,  in  fact,  than 
he  understood  it.  He  had  been  in  America  for  six  years, 
he  told  me,  thirty-five  years  ago.  He  went  as  a  sailor  to 
New  York,  then  again  by  ship  to  San  Francisco,  where  he 
worked  at  gold  mining.  He  made  $60  to  $70  a  month, 
working  for  a  big  company. 
13 


i94 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Characteris- 

Dalmatian 
emiration 


Causes  of 


special 


Such  a  people  as  the  Dalmatians,  so  situated,  would 
naturally  be  mobile,  but  Dalmatian  emigration,  which 
we  may  take  as  the  type  for  this  region,  has  a  quite 
different  character  from  that  of  any  other  Slavic  emi 
gration  movement.  It  Jias__h£enl_as  it  were,  a  long- 
continued  dripping^of_indjvirliiR]s.  not  a  mass  movement 
growing  as  a  snowball  does,  like  that  a"mong""tte  "Slovaks 
and  Croatians,  nor  a  family  migration,  like  that  of  the 
Bohemians.  Thejnen  j£>  alojie^ofteri  making  the  jour 
ney  as  sailors,  and  simply  leaving  their  ship  jnjbart,  —  a 
f  act""Wh~ich"m~  t  he  past  has  doubtless  brought  many  into 
America  unregistered,  in  so  far  vitiating  our  statistics. 
One  local  informant  after  another  stated  with  great 
emphasis  that  the  Dalmatian  does  not  go  "like  other 
emigrants"  at  random,*  but  to  a  particular  place  and 
friend,  and  with  a  very  clear  idea  of  what  he  is  about. 

There  is  ground  enough  for  emigration  in  the  general 
situation  of  a  rapj_dlv^grow^^ 

available  soil,  so  that  the  most  inaccessible  spots  are  ter- 
^raced  and  cultivated,  and  a  teaspoonful  of  earth  in  a  hol 
low  is  made  to  grow  something.  f  But  besides  this  general 
situation,  special  causes  have  been  at  work.  First  we 
may  put  the  decline  of  the  old  commerce,  dependent 
on  sails,  and,  it  must  be  said,  on  piracy.  Cn  the  shores 
of  the  Bocche  one  sees  dead  towns  of  dream-like  streets 
lined  with  deserted  villas,  and  at  Zeng  the  proud  row  of 
warehouses  built  to  shield  the  harbor  from  the  Bora, 
but  now  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  needs  of  trade,  tells 
the  same  story  of  the  victory  of  steam  over  sails  as  do 
the  decaying  merchant  homes  of  Salem  or  Newburyport 
in  New  England. 

A  later  cause  of  emigration  was  a  treaty  made  in  1890, 
which  for  the  fifteen  years  that  it  was  in  force  depressed  the 
price  of  Dalmatian  wine  by  exposing  it  to  Italian  competi- 


*  For  reasons  for  the  belief  that  Slavic  emigrants  in  general 
also  emigrate  not  at  random,  but  planning  to  join  friends,  see 
above,  page  53,  and  Appendix  IV,  page  433. 

t  Compare  for  Dalmatian  conditions  Table  3,  page  48. 


THE    ADRIATIC    COAST    OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


tion  and  did  much  to  makejife_inipo.ssible  to  the  wine 
grower,  already  hard  hit  by  the  phylloxera.  Other  com- 
t§^|«OlOfiBC2BB^p6w<ier-  ~pla.nts-rof 
f_seyere  winters  that  have  done 
muchjdamage.  -  The  evil  results  ofjm  extreme  subdivision 

nf  1  a ""  IjH^UL1.0**  ff'P*"'  A"  fAlrp  Tnr  1  pgg  than  an  acre  and  a 
half,  is  said  to  be  the  average  holding  of  a  small  peasant. 
This  would  be  insufficient  if  it  were  not  that  the  soil  is 
so  fruitful.  I  was  told  that  a  yoke  of  good  vineyard 
would  produce  seventy  hectolitres  of  wine,  enough  to 
support  a  family.  In  other  places  one  is  told  that  a 
family  can  live  from  the  yield  of  one  olive  tree! 
jit  is  hard  to  say  when  the  Dalmatians  began  to  go  to  Beginnings 

terica ;    it  was  certainly  early.     One  is  said  to  have  of  emigra- 

.  tion  to 

ived  in  1700  by  way  of  India,  and  apparently  a  good  America 

my  came  to  look  for  g6ld  in  California  after   1849. 
close  in  1^6  "Of  "the  Crimean  War,  in  which  many 


Dalmatians  served  on  shipboard,  seems  to  have  given 
another  impulse. 

As  to  numbers,  it  is  also  hard  to  get  any  definite  in-  Numbers  of 
formation  until  1899,  when  our  immigration  tables  began  emisrants 
to  report  as  one  class  Dalmatians,  Bosnians  and  Herze- 
govinians.     The  number  of  these  coming  in   1907  was 
over  7,000,  _of  whom  most  were  probably  Dalmatians. 
This  was,  however,  the  high  tide  mark  up  to  date.     For 
the  official  American  figures  see  the  following  table: 

TABLE   12.— IMMIGRATION,    1899-1909 


YEAR 

DALMATIANS,  BOSNIANS 
AND  HERZEGOVINIANS 

BULGARIANS,  SERVIANS  AND 
MONTENEGRINS 

1800.  . 

^67 

Od. 

IQOO.  .  . 

67S 

2O4. 

IQOI  .  . 

7  32 

6n 

IOO2  .  . 

I  OOd. 

IQO^.  . 

I  7  "?6 

IQO4.  . 

2O  36 

IQCK  .  . 

26  10 

»  o  /  / 

s   82  7 

1006.  . 

A$68 

5'°^O 
I  I    C  A8 

IQO7  . 

1  3Q  7 

IOO8 

1  6v  6 

18  246 

IQOQ  

61^1 
1888 

6,214 

196 


SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 


Sh  if  tings  of 
population 


In  1905  a  Ragusa  steamship  agent,  then  the  only 
authorized  agent  for  all  Dalmatia,  stated  that  three  or 
four  thousand  were  going  yearly,  three-quarters  to  New 
York  and  one-quarter  to  the  Far  West;  of  the  latter, 
nine  out  of  ten  were  going  to  California,  the  others  to 
the'Dakotas;  but  this  is  a  very  imperfect  account  of 
their  final  destinations. 

As  is  so  often  the  case,  emigration  to  America  is 
here  also  but  one  in  a  series  of  adjustments  of  popula 
tion.  The  exodus  to  America  creates  a  scarcity  of  labor 
which  is  in  turn  met  by  an  influx  from  places  that 
are  still  worse  off  economically.  For  instance  I  was  told 

1700  out  of  a  population 


Remittances 


Morals  and 
education 


Illiteracy 


of  9914  had  emigrated,  drew  several  hundreds  of  workers 
from  the  mainland  to  carry  on  its  agriculture,  and  that 
if  the  movement  continued  it  would  be  felt  as  a  great 
hardship.  Similarly  Ragusa  Vecchia,  and  other  places 
draw  in  harvest  hands  from  Montenegro. 

As  to  remittances,  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  get  data 
of  any  value,  though  what  was  told  me  indicated  that 
the  Dalmatians  dealt  with  larger  sums  than  most  Slavs, 
which  agrees  with  their  reputation  for  greater  aptitude 
for  commerce. 

When  the  men  are  away,  the  women  attend  to  the 
tillage,  whatever  it  is,  and  they  have  the  reputation  of 
being  excellent  vine-dressers.  They  are  said  to  have  a 
higher  standard  of  morality  than  the  women  further 
inland.  In  some  places  it  is  the  custom  that  a  wToman 
shall  go  to  no  dance  or  festivity  while  her  husband  is  on 
the  sea  ;  but  when  he  is  in  port  she  knows  that  he  is  alive 
and  probably  having  his  share  of  amusement,  and  she 
goes  with  the  rest.  In  general  the  coast  population  are 
more  alert,  more  cultivated  by  contact  with  men  and 
affairs  than  are  the  people  of  the  interior. 

They  are,  however,  very  illiterate,  especially  the  women. 
The__  census  of  1900  showed,  that  among  the  ServcP" 
Croatians  of  Austria  (that  is,  practically,  the  Dalmatians 
and  Istrians),  nearly  70  per  cent  of  the  men  between 


z    ^ 


THE    ADRIATIC    COAST    OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         197 

thirty...andL.,  fifty  years  of  age  were  illiterate,-  and  nearly 
90  per  cent  of  the  women  of  the  same  age.  Even  among 
young  men  between  ten  and  twenty,  over  half  could 
neither  read  nor  write. 

This  excessive  illiteracy  is  in  curious  contrast    with  Dalmatians 

the  exceptionally  shrewd,   intelligent  character  of  the  good  busi" 
J  ness  men 

Dalmatians.  In  the  United  States  they  take  not  only 
to  the  various  kinds  of  work  for  which  their  lives  as 
fishermen  and  sailors  have  especially  fitted  them,  but 
to  business  in  various  lines.  They  have  apparently 
especial  success  in  managing  restaurants.  Illiteracy  is 
not  always  as  great  a  handicap  as  one  would  suppose, 
even  in  business.  Not  long  ago  in  Cleveland  I  met  a 
gentleman  from  one  of  our  southwestern  states  who  had 
come  north  to  interest  investors  in  a  mining  enterprise. 
He  was  a  fine-looking  man  with  the  speech,  bearing  and 
address  of  a  quiet  but  prosperous  American.  I  learned 
that  he  came  in  1849  from  Dalmatia  on  his  uncle's  ship, 
which  he  left  to  look  for  gold  during  the  California  ex 
citement  of  that  time.  His  business  acquaintances,  I 
am  told,  wonder  why  he  always  leaves  them  to  pick  out 
the  particular  paper  that  is  wanted  from  his  pile  of  assay 
reports  and  other  documents.  The  reason  is  that  he 
cannot  read,  nor  write  anything  but  his  own  name. 

If  the  first  generation  in  America  overcomes  its  Develop- 
deficiencies  thus,  the  second  seems  to  profit  to  the  full  by 
American  advantages.  An  informant  in  Galveston,  tell 
ing  me  of  a  Dalmatian  family  said,  "The  son  is  an 
American,  pure  and  simple;  there  is  no  evidence  of  a 
foreigner  about  him."  Of  another  Dalmatian  of  the 
second  generation  he  said,  "  He  is  a  great  ball  player,  and 
a  thorough  American  in  spirit.  I  think  they  are  more 
readily  digested  than  other  people.  They  are  strong  and 
manly,  have  good  morals,  make  money.  They  drink  a 
good  deal,  but  in  ten  years  I  have  known  only  one  drunk 
ard.  As  an  example  of  how  they  get  on,  take  the  family 
of  Michael  S.  I  doubt  if  he  could  read  or  write.  The 
eldest  son,  Stephen,  is  physically  one  of  the  most  mag- 


198  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

nificent  looking  fellows  in  town.  He  holds  a  responsible 
position  in  a  shipping  agency.  The  next  son  is  a  fine 
stenographer,  and  is  working  in  a  wholesale  commission 
store.  The  third,  William,  has  a  fruit  business  of  his 
own.  John  and  Michael  junior  are  both  stenographers. 
One  son  left  the  parochial  school  for  the  public  school 
when  he  had  made  his  first  communion.  He  went  from 
the  sixth  grade  parochial  to  the  fifth  grade  public,  but 
was  then  put  in  the  seventh." 

I  have  taken  Dalmatian  emigration  as  the  type  for 
this  region,  and  of  this  and  the  adjoining  coast  of  Croatia 
no  more  need  be  said  here. 

Istria  The  Croatian-speaking  part  of  Istria  which  alone  con 

cerns  us  is  largely  mountainous  and  extremely  poor. 
The  emigration  thence  is  numerically  slight  and  quite 
recent,  and  is  apparently  directly  due  to  the  opening  of 
the  Cunard  route  from  Fiume  to  New  York.  It  began  to 
be  of  some  importance  in  1903,  and  I  was  told  that 
Fiume  agents  incite  it.  There  are  no  available  data. 

Bosnia-Her-  From  Bosnia-Herzegovina,  the  province  lying  back  of 
Dalmatia,  which  after  having  been  "administered"  by 
Austria-Hungary  since  the  decision  of  the  treaty  of 
Berlin  to  that  effect  in  1878  was  so  unceremoniously 
"annexed"  in  the  autumn  of  1908,  there  is  also  some 
emigration,  though  our  data  do  not  enable  us  to  dis 
entangle  it  from  that  from  Dalmatia.  In  any  case  it 
is  numerically  unimportant,  and  gives  little  excuse  for 
describing  this  fascinating  country  nearly  half  of  whose 
Servo-Croatian  population  are,  by  a  curious  turn  of 
history,  Mohammedan,  though  monogamous  by  binding 
custom.* 

*  To  those  interested  I  heartily  recommend  A.  J.  Evans' 
"Through  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  on  Foot  During  the  Insur 
rection,  August  and  September,  1875."  The  book  includes  a 
delightful  historical  account  of  Ragusa,  and  descriptions  of  bits 
of  Croatia. 

A  descriptive  article  by  myself  "A  Week  in  Hercegovina  and 
Bosnia,"  may  be  found  in  the  Bryn  Mawr  Alumnae  Quarterly 
of  October,  1908,  and  in  the  Wellesley  College  Magazine  of  May, 
1909. 


THE    ADRIATIC    COAST    OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY          199 

Montenegro,  Servia  and  Bulgaria  lie  outside  the  limits  Montenegro, 
of  my  study  of  Slavic  immigration  from  Austria-Hun- 
gary,*  but  these  countries  have  been  rapidly  gaining  in 
importance  as  sources  of  emigration,  their  contingent 
rising  to  over  27,000  in  1907,  and  maintaining  itself 
at  over  6000  even  in  the  lean  year  1909.!  Unfortunately 
our  data  give  no  hint  of  what  proportion  came  from  each 
country.  In  the  case  of  Servia  and  Montenegro  it  is 
not  important  to  distinguish  them  from  one  another, 
Montenegrins  being  also  Servians  in  blood  and  speech, 
and  divided  only  politically  from  the  kingdom  of  Servia. 
Bulgarians,  however,  are  an  entirely  distinct  group, 
Slavic  in  speech  and  affiliations,  but  with  an  unknown 
element  of  the  blood  of  the  old  Bulgars,  a  people  of 
Asiatic  stock,  with  a  speech  akin  to  the  Finnic  and  Mag 
yar,  t 

Montenegro  I  visited  in  1905,  but  there  seemed  little 
to  learn  as  to  emigration.  A  Dalmatian  emigration 
agent  told  us  indeed  that  as  many  as  2000  emigrated 
yearly  from  this  little  principality  of  not  much  over 
200,000  population, §  but  that  they  go  wholly  to  Alaska. 
In  Douglas,  Alaska,  a  Servian  paper  is  or  was  published, 
a  copy  of  which  was  shown  us,  containing  a  long 
poem  in  which  the  Eagle  and  the  Vila  (the  powerful 
mountain  goddess  or  fairy  of  Servian  folk-lore)  discoursed 
of  the  destiny  of  the  poor  emigrants.  The  eagle  told  how 
they  had  suffered  on  the  vessel,  how  a  storm  had  arisen 
and  how  the  captain  was  panic-stricken  till  the  emigrants 
advised  him  to  pray  to  Saint  Nicholas,  the  patron  of 
voyagers,  which  he  did,  after  which  all  was  well.  I  have 
never  observed  just  this  relation  between  steerage  passen 
gers  and  captain,  but  I  have  seen  the  design  for  a  statue  to 

*  Other  Slavic  emigration  districts  which  also  lie  outside  this 
study,  as  already  mentioned,  are  Russian  and  German  Poland 
and  Russia  itself.  For  some  account  of  Russian  immigration, 
and  some  further  data  as  to  Bulgarian  and  Servian  immigrants 
see  Chapter  XIII. 

t  The  figures  are  given  above  in  Table  12,  page  195. 

j  Cf .  Ripley:   "Races  of  Europe,"  Vol.  I,  page  421. 

§  Population  in  1900,  227,  841. 


200  SLAVIC    EMIGRATION    AT    ITS    SOURCE 

Saint  Nicholas,  to  be  erected  by  grateful  returned  emi 
grants  in  a  Croatian  village. 

Montene-  We  were  told  frequently  of  the  then  recent  rejection 

tion  emigra"  at  Ellis  Island  of  some  hundred  or  more  Montenegrins. 
These  men  had  borrowed  the  money  for  their  tickets,  and 
their  forced  return  was  a  serious  matter  for  them  and 
theirs.  For  some  time  after  this  the  Montenegrin 
government  would  grant  no  more  passes;  later,  the 
central  authorities  issued  passes,  but  lower  officials 
were  forbidden  to  do  so.  I  judge,  however,  that  pass 
ports  are  not  practically  a  necessity,  whether  legally  re 
quired  or  not.  In  1904,  only  54  passports  were  issued 
to  America  and  South  America,  which  certainly  could 
not  cover  the  number  of  those  emigrating,  but  it  was  not 
easy  to  get  further  information.  As  an  official  in  a 
neighboring  Austrian  town  said  to  us,  "Small  states  love 
secrets." 

In  Cetinje,  the  capital,  we  met  the  very  usual  evidence 
of  interest  in  emigration  to  America  which  is  shown  by 
inquiries  how  to  get  there,  this  time  inquiries  from  a  tall 
soldier  on  sentinel  duty ;  and  a  beautiful  girl,  with  the  rare, 
stately  beauty  of  the  Montenegrin  women,  walking  home 
with  her  knitting  through  the  early  twilight  to  her  home 
on  the  mountains,  an  hour  away,  told  us  that  her 
brother  was  in  New  York. 

The  Montenegrin  men  do  not  seem  to  have  a  first-class 
reputation,  in  neighboring  Dalmatia,  as  workers,  but 
were  said  to  find  employment  in  Cattaro,  the  Dalmatian 
port  just  below  Montenegro,  because  they  would  work 
for  less  money  than  Dalmatians,  who  asked  two  crowns 
(forty  cents)  a  day.  It  was  said  that  only  two  Montene 
grin  women  had  emigrated,  one  of  them  to  Buenos  Ayres. 
This  shows,  if  proof  were  necessary,  in  how  early  a  phase 
this  emigration  movement  still  is  (or  was  in  1905). 
Montene-  With  their  small  numbers  it  is  not  surprising  that  I 

grms  in  have  not  been  able  to  learn  much  about  Montenegrins  in 

America 

America,  but  I  did  once  run  across  traces  of  a  party  of 

35  of  them  in  a  Colorado  mining  camp,  where  they  had 


1 


A  HOME  IN  MONTENEGRO 

No  chimney,  a  roof  of  dry  grass,  walls  of  unmortared  stones  without  windows. 


THE    ADRIATIC    COAST    OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY         2OI 

left  an  unenviable  reputation  for  a  low  grade  of  living.  I 
saw  the  rough  shacks  provided  for  them  in  which  they 
had  bunked  promiscuously,  and  I  remembered  the  low 
huts  of  unmortared  stone,  with  roofs  of  grass  and  filled 
with  smoke  and  children,  which  I  had  seen  on  their 
naked  mountain  sides.  I  thought  of  the  still  frequent 
newspaper  accounts  of  clashes  of  their  bands  with  the 
Turks  on  the  frontier,  and  of  how  close  they  stand  to  the 
heroic  age  in  which  the  woman  alone  labors,  since  the 
man  must  fight  and  hunt.  I  recalled  the  Homeric 
figure  of  the  blind  gusla  player  singing  epic  songs  in  the 
square  at  Cetinje  (I  suppose  the  only  instance  in  Europe 
of  a  living  epic) ,  and  I  did  not  wonder  that  the  Monte 
negrins  cannot  meet  the  standards  at  once  of  the  tenth 
and  twentieth  centuries.* 

*  So  recently  as  1875  the  following  episode  which  reads  like 
some  mediaeval  romance  is  said  to  have  actually  taken  place. 
A  young  man,  for  an  aggravated  crime  of  seduction,  was  given 
the  following  sentence  by  the  whole  village  acting  as  a  tribunal. 
"Milutin,  in  order  that  he  may  do  penance  before  God  in  his 
deepest  soul  for  the  sin  that  he  has  committed,  and  that  he  may 
wash  his  honor  clean  before  the  world  must,  in  the  next  fight 
that  may  occur  with  the  Turks,  charge  them  unarmed,  and  snatch 
a  weapon  from  a  Turk  living  or  dead,  and  thus  prove  that  he  can 
appreciate  honor  and  courage."  In  the  revolt  of  1875  Milutin 
fulfilled  his  strange  sentence,  which  reconciled  what  was  prac 
tically  a  sentence  of  death  with  the  Slavic  horror  of  bloodshed; 
attacked  a  division  of  Turks  without  any  weapon  and  met  his 
death.  See  Krauss:  "Sitte  und  Brauch  der  Siid-Slaven,"  page 


PART  II 

SLAVIC  IMMIGRANTS  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES 


Ubi  bene,  ibi  P atria 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  HISTORY  OF  SLAVIC  IMMIGRATION 
PREVIOUS  TO  1880 

The  time  has  not  yet  come  when  the  history  of  Slavic   Accounts  of 
immigration    can   be   written   with   any   thoroughness,   ^f^]^" 
The  preliminary  work  must  be  done  by  local  antiquarian  needed 
societies,  state  historical  associations,  writers  of  mono 
graphs,  and  mainly  by  members  of  the  various  nation 
alities    themselves.     Meanwhile,    unless    the    work    of 
collecting    material    is    vigorously    and    systematically 
carried  on,  much  will  be  irrevocably  lost.*     I  submit 
for  criticism  a  rough  outline  for  such  a  history  so  far  as 
I  have  made  it  out. 

The  reader  of  previous  chapters  will  find  in  this  ac 
count  a  recurrence  to  persons  and  events  already  men 
tioned  in  connection  with  the  various  separate  cradles 
of  emigration, — persons  and  events  which  now  have  to 
be  considered  together  in  chronological  sequence  as  they 
affect  America.  To  bring  together  the  facts  bearing  on 
the  same  point,  wherever  they  are  taken  up,  reference  may 
be  made  to  the  index,  which  takes  the  place  of  some  of 
the  cross  references  which  would  otherwise  be  required. 

*The  intelligent  and  foresighted  effort  of  the  Wisconsin 
Historical  Society,  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  Thwaites,  to 
gather  material  on  foreign  settlements  in  the  State  before  the 
memory  of  their  early  stages  is  lost,  is  one  that  should  be  gener 
ally  imitated.  Unfortunately,  the  undertaking  was  not  com 
pleted,  but  some  of  the  material  has  been  published  and  some 
of  it  is  accessible  in  the  society's  library  at  Madison. 

Among  the  immigrants  themselves  it  is  very  naturally  the 
two  older  groups,  the  Bohemians  and  the  Poles,  who  have  done 
most  toward  getting  their  history  written,  and  it  must  be  said 
that  both  have  made  creditable  beginnings.  For  a  partial 
bibliography,  see  Appendix  XIV,  page  456. 

205 


206        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


FIRST  PERIOD:    SPORADIC  ARRIVALS 
BEFORE   1850. 

I  distinguish_three^p^eriQdsf  that  before  1850,  t'MTfrom"" 
1850  to~i88o,  and  that  since  1880.     The  first  is  marked 
by  no  considerable  influx,  but  by  scattered   individuals 
rescued  from  oblivion  Try  some  personal  distinction  or~ 
some  touch  of  the  picturesque. 

Individual  The  list  is  headed  by  a  Pole,  John  of  Kolno,  previously 
referred  to,  who  is  said  to  have  commanded  a  vessel  from 
Danzig  and  to  have  discovered  the  Labrador  mainland 
sixteen  years  before  Columbus  crossed  the  Atlantic.*  In 
the  seventeenth  century  appear  a  number  of  sturdy 
worthies  of  Manhattan,  including  the  two  Bohemians  al 
ready  spoken  of,  Augustine  Herman,  Lord  of  Bohemia 
Manor,  and  Bedf  ich  Filip,  who  reached  what  was  then  New 
Amsterdam  about  1658^  The  founder  of  the  distinguished 
family  of  the  Zabriskies  was  one  Albert  Soborowski  or 
Albrecht  Zaborowsky,  who  in  1662  or  earlier  settled  on  ' 
the  Hackensack  River  in  New  Jersey.  His  signature  as 
interpreter  is  found  affixed  to  an  Indian  contract  of 
purchase  in  1679.  One  descendant  was  Abraham  O. 
Zabriskie,  an  eminent  Chancellor  of  New  Jersey,  another 
was  the  Rev.  George  Gray/  Dean  of  Harvard  College. 
The  family  claim  descent  from  the  Polish  King,  John 
Sobieski,  but  Mr.  Capek  argues  in  favor  of  their  Bohe 
mian  origin.  J  These  men  and  their  descendants  inter 
married  with  well-known  families  like  that  of  Gouverneur 

*  I  find  in  the  American  Pioneer,  I,  pages  399-400,  a  communi 
cation  signed  Polonus,  which  states  that  in  "Ulisses,"  by  George 
Korn,  Leyden  (?)  1671,  it  is  mentioned  that  John  Scolnus 
(that  is,  John  of  Kolno,  a  small  town  in  Masovia  in  Russian 
Poland),  a  Pole  in  the  service  of  Christian,  King  of  Denmark, 
discovered  the  continent  of  Labrador  in  the  year  1476.  See 
also  Kruszka:  "Historya  Polska  w  Ameryce,"  I,  page  52. 

t  See  pages  68-69.  Additional  names  will  be  found  in 
Capek's  "  Pamdtky  Ceskych  Emigrantu  v  Americe." 

J  See  Capek,  page  9;  Kruszka:  "Historya  Polska  w 
Ameryce,"  page  53;  New  York  Gen.  Rec.,  XXIII,  pages  26,  33, 
139—47  (quoted  by  Capek).  See  also  Who's  Who  in  America 
for  modern  representatives  of  the  name.  For  part  of  my  in 
formation  I  am  indebted  to  a  living  member  of  the  family. 


MANOR  HOUSE  OF  FREDERICK  PHILLIPS 

Built  in  1682 — Xo\v  the  citv  hall  of  Yonkers,  N.  Y. 


FIRST  HOUSE  IN   BETHLEHEM 

The  place  of  the  Moravian  Settlement  in  Pennsylvania,  1741. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  207 

Morris,  the  Bayards,  Jays,  Morrisons,  Astors  and  others, 
and,  like  all  the  immigrants  of  the  period  before  1850, 
were  quickly  merged  in  the  general  population. 

Whether  Zaborowsky  was  a  Pole  or  not,  we  are  in 
formed  that  as  early  as  1659  the  Dutch  colonists  of  Man 
hattan  Island  hired  a  Polish  schoolmaster  for  the  educa 
tion  of  the  youth  of  the  community.*  One  hears  of 
Polish  settlers  in  Virginia,!  of  Polish  indented  servants 
in  southern  states,  J  and  Proper  speaks  of  a  small  colony  < 
of  Polish  Protestants  who,  during  the  early  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  settled  in  New  Jersey  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Passaic  and  Raritan.§ 

Another  historical  waif  is  the  story  already  referred 
to  of  the  unnamed  Dalmatian  who  is  said  to  have  gone 
to  California  some  time  before  1700  by  way  of  India. 
Less  shadowy  is  Sodowsky,  who  probably  settled  in 
what  is  now  New  York  City  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne. 
He  was  an  Indian  trader,  and  his  sons  James  and  Jacob 
were  frontiersmen  in  the  days  when  white  men  were 
first  beginning  to  get  a  foothold  in  Kentucky.  With 
Hight  and  Harrod,  James  Sodowsky  helped  make  the  first 
"improvement"  there,  when  in  1774  they  planted  corn 
at  Harrod's  Station.  This  settlement  was  broken  up  by 
Indians.  Jacob  is  said  to  have  made  a  canoe  voyage, 
and  to  have  reached  New  Orleans  by  the  Cumberland, 
Ohio  and  Mississippi  rivers,  the  first  white  man  after  the 
Spanish  and  French  to  descend  those  streams.  It  is  a 
disputed  point  whether  or  not  the  name  of  Sandusky  in 
Ohio  is  derived  from  a  corruption  of  the  name  Sodowsky. || 

*  Conway,  J. :  "Catholic  Education  in  the  United  States," 
quoted  by  Kruszka,  I,  page  53. 

t  Kruszka,  I,  page  54. 

J  Ballagh,  J.  C.:  "  White  Servitude  in  the  Colony  of  Virginia." 
Johns  Hopkins  Univ.  Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science, 
XIII,  page  40. 

§  Proper,  E.  E.:  "Colonial  Immigration  Laws,"  Columbia 
College  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Law,  XII, 
page  81. 

||  For  a  fairly  full  though  not  wholly  consistent  account  of  the 
Sodowsky  pioneers  see  the  American  Pioneer,  I,  page  119,  and  II, 
page  325.  Cf.  also  Roosevelt's  "Winning  of  the  West,"  I,  page 
164. 


208        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Moravian 
brethren 


Polish 
patriots 


There  were  probably  other  more  or  less  distinguished 
colonial  families,  both  Bohemian  and  Polish,  but  in 
formation  is  scarce.  William  Paca,  one  of  the  signers  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  was  of  an  old  and 
numerous  family  which  may  have  a  Bohemian  origin.* 

Of  wider  interest  was  the  coming  of  the  thrice  win 
nowed  followers  of  Huss,  the  "Moravian  Brethren. "f 
(See  above,  page  69.)  Exiled  from  Bohemia  as  "Bo 
hemian  Brethren,"  they  were  later  drawn  from  their 
refuge  in  Moravia  to  Saxony,  where  Count  Zinsendorf 
gave  them  protection  at  Herrnhut.  Fired  with  mis 
sionary  zeal,  a  small  body  of  this  sect  landed  in  1736.111 
Georgia,  where  Count  Zinsendorf  had  procured  a  grant 
of  land.  Mere  Wesley  attended  the  dedieation  of  their 
church.  By  1739  they  had  also  a  missionary  colony  in 
South  Carolina,  but  this  had  to  be  abandoned,  owing  to 
quarrels  between  the  English  and  Spanish  in  which  the 
Moravians  would  not  participate  and  could  not  remain 
neutral.  In  1740  they  were  accordingly  transported  in 
Whitefield's  shallop  to  Philadelphia.  Again  difficulties 
arose,  but  by  1741  they  were  established  at  Bethlehem 
in  the  Lehigh  Valley.  From  this  as  a  centre  they  have 
founded  numerous  settlements,  and  have  increased  until 
they  now  number  over  16,000  in  the  United  States. 

While,  as  has  been  said,  this  movement  has  an  inner 
connection  with  Bohemian  history,  it  is  hard  to  say  how 
far  it  meant  an  actual  infusion  of  Slavic  blood.  There 
may  be  more  than  names  would  indicate,  as  Bohemians 
would  have  been  very  likely  to  translate  their  names  (as 
Schwarz  for  Cerny)  or  to  conform  them  to  German  usage. 

Our  Revolution  brought  from  Poland  the  national 
hero,  Kosciuszko,  together  with  Pulaski,  who  died  at 
Savannah,  and  Niemcewicz,  biographer  of  Washington, 
three  men  who  with  the  Frenchman,  Lafayette,  seem 

*  Capek,  page  10. 

t  There  is  a  large  and  detailed  literature  of  the  Moravian 
movement,  much  of  which  can  be  readily  consulted.  Cf.  Gindely '. 
"Geschichte  der  Bohmischen  Bruder,"  besides  the  English 
authorities. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  2OQ 

to  lend  a  touch  of  exotic  romance  to  the  homespun 
of  our  own  embattled  farmers.* 

The  Polish  insurrection  of  1831  sent  us  a  more  con 
siderable  and  more  abiding  contingent  including,  among 
many  Poles,  a  Bohemian  volunteer  in  their  cause,  Dr. 
Dignovity,  later  of  San  Antonio,  Texas,  where  his  family 
are  said  still  to  prosper. f 

A  pathetic  echo  of  the  fate  of  some  of  the  Polish  exiles 
is  a  reminiscence  of  an  American  lady  who  lived  as  a 
girl  in  Troy,  New  York,  some  time  in  the  early  thirties. 
She  told  me  that  she  could  never  forget  seeing  there  a 
group  of  Polish  gentlemen,  ragged,  but  obvious  aristo 
crats,  working  at  the  cobbled  paving  of  the  street  with 
bleeding  fingers.  A  few  days  later  one  of  these  men 
looked  at  his  torn  hands,  drew  out  a  pistol  and  shot 
himself. 

The  little  girl  in  Troy  was  not  alone  in  her  sense  of 
pity  for  the  exiles,  as  is  manifested  in  the  current  litera 
ture  of  the  day,J  and  more  practically  by  the  grant  from 
Congress  of  land  amounting  to  thirty-six  sections.  Two 
townships  were  surveyed  for  them  near  Rock  River, 
Illinois.  § 

*  Kruszka  (I,  page  54  ff,)  gives  an  account  of  these  heroes  and 
of  many  lesser  early  Polish  immigrants. 

f  Capek,  pages  98-105.  Capek  speaks  of  various  other  immi 
grants  of  the  early  nineteenth  century,  one  of  them  an  associate 
of  John  Jacob  Astor,  besides  those  mentioned  above,  page  69. 

J  In  the  New  England  Magazine  of  January,  1835,  is  an  inter 
esting  article  (unsigned)  on  the  Polish  Exiles.  It  refers  with 
romantic  enthusiasm  to  Poland's  wrongs,  sufferings  and  glories, 
and  especially  reproaches  America  with  her  ungenerous  treat 
ment  of  those  exiles  who  have  come  thither.  "There  have  ar 
rived  in  the  United  States  about  three  hundred  and  fifty  exiles 
of  Poland;  most  of  them  non-commissioned  officers,  young 
men — many  of  them  boys.  Of  these  not  even  fifty  have  found 
employment  suitable  to  their  education  and  former  habits;  the 
majority  of  the  rest  have  applied  themselves  to  hard  work,  such 
as  they  could  find,  to  earn  their  bitter  bread  and  pass  away  the 
dreary  days  of  their  exile  until  their  country  shall  again  call  them 
to  her  rescue;  for  they  will  not  abandon  the  hope  of  one  day 
seeing  her  free,  and  nobly  refuse  to  take  upon  themselves  any 
engagement  which  will  prevent  them  from  obeying  her  first 
signal."  See  also  Kraitser:  "The  Poles  in  the  United  States  of 
America,"  pages  193—6. 

§  Donaldson:    "The  Public  Domain,"  page  212. 


210        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Refugees  of        The  revolutionary  year  1848  also  sent  us,  as  has  been 
1848  said  before,  political  refugees  from  both  Bohemia  and 

Poland,  as  well  as  those  from  France  and  Germany  of 
whom  Carl  Schurz  is  the  best  known.  Of  this  move 
ment  a  well  informed  Bohemian  writes: 

"The  first  emigration  from  Bohemia  to  the  United 
States  took  place  in  the  few  years  succeeding  the  Revo 
lution  of  1848  in  Austria,  and  the  cause  therefor  was  al 
most  entirely  political  dissatisfaction  due  to  the  reaction 
/  toward  despotism  which  followed  that  revolution.     These 
first  settlers  were  of  the  most  intelligent  class  of  people, 
and  in  very  many  cases  of  the  wealthy  classes.     They 
>-  established  themselves  in   St.   Louis,   Missouri,   and  in 

Caledonia,  Wisconsin  (near  Racine)."* 

The  gold  The  gold  fever  of  1849,  as  also  mentioned  in  previous 

chapters,  brought  adventurers  to  California,  some  Bohe 
mians   probably,    and   some    Dalmatians.     Dalmatians, 
indeed,  being  sailors  and  fishermen,  either  from  the  coast 
;  or  islands  of  the  Adriatic,  have  come  to  us  now  and  again 
I  from  very  early  times. 

Statistics  of       In  the  period  previous  to  1850  our  immigration  statis- 
immigration  tics  published  by  the  Treasury  Department  are  of  little 
value  to  us.     They  do  not  mention  Austria-Hungary  as 
a  country  of  origin  (this  first  appears  in  the  list  in  1861) 
but  Poland  and  "  Russia  except  Poland  "  do  appear.     For 
the  whole   period   of  thirty   years,   however,   only   495 
"alien  passengers"  are  recorded  from  Poland   and   907 
•   from  Russia  except  Poland.     Immigrants  are  not  dis 
tinguished    from    transient    visitors.     The    figures    are 
]  doubtless  very  defective  in  any  case,  apart  from  the  fact 
that  German  Poles  are  indistinguishable  from  Germans 
and  that  Bohemians  have  no  rubric  at  all. 
United  The  census  of  1850,  to  which  we  then  turn  to  sum  up 

States  Cen-     ^g  resuits  of  this  period  as  well  as  it  can  be  done,  does 
sus  of  1850 

not  specify  either  Poland  or  Bohemia  as  countries  of 

*  ' '  The  Bohemian  Settlements  in  Kewaunee  County. ' '    Anony 
mous  MSS.  in  possession  of  State  Historical  Society  of  Wisconsin. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION 


211 


birth.*  The  Polish  immigrants  of  this  period,  being 
mainly  from  German  Poland  and  Silesia,  doubtless  are 
merged  with  the  mass  of  the  German  born,  who  already 
in  1850  numbered  nearly  600,000.  Natives  of  Austria,  the 
bulk  of  whom  were  certainly  Bohemians,  then  numbered, 
so  far  as  registered,  only  946.  The  largest  groups 
were  at  the  doors,  so  to  speak,  in  New  York  City  (109), 
New  Orleans  (129)  and  in  California  (87).  Inland  the 
beginnings  of  the  later  large  Bohemian  colonies  in  Mis 
souri,  Illinois  and  Wisconsin  were  already  apparent. 

SECOND  PERIOD:    1850-1880. 
THE  OLDER  SLAVIC  IMMIGRATION 

During  this  period  there  was  a  considerable  immigra-     i 
tion^£J3,Qtonians  and  Poles,  the  latter  still  mainly  from     . 
the  G^fTraTT'pTo^inces.     Bohemian  immigration  began  Ij 
to  be  of  importance  earlier  than  the  Polish,  and  through-  * 
out  this  period  continued  to  outnumber  it. 

The  United  States  figures  for  arrivals  of  alien  pas 
sengers  for  the  period  are: 

TABLE  13.— ARRIVALS   OF   ALIEN   PASSENGERS 
AND  IMMIGRANTS,  1850-1880. t 


YEAR 

POLAND 

RUSSIA 

EXCEPT 

POLAND 

HUNGARY 

OTHER 

AUSTRIA 

EXCEPT 

HUNGARY 

1851-1860 
1861-1870 
1871-1880 

1,164 
2,027 
12,970 

457 

2;532 

38,838! 

484! 
9,960 

5.9I4J 

63,009 

Total  for  the  period 

16,161 

41,827 

io,444 

68,923 

*  For  a  discussion  of  census  data  as  a  basis  for  estimating  the 
numbers  of  Slavic  inhabitants  see  Appendix  XV,  page  458. 

t  Alien  passengers  through  1867-68;  immigrants  since  that 
date. 

t  192  passengers,  the  country  of  whose  origin  is  stated  only  as 
Austria-Hungary,  are  omitted  from  the  figures  for  1868. 

§  After  1871  passengers  from  Finland  are  given  apart  from 
those  of  Russia  and  are  not  here  included.  For  immigration 
figures  previous  to  1892  see  "Arrivals  of  Alien  Passengers  and 
Immigrants  in  the  United  States  from  1820  to  1892."  Treasury 
Dept.  Report,  1893. 


212        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  census  results  for  the  period  are  shown  in  brief 
in  Chart  I. 


Natives  of  1860  1870  1880 


Austria    25,061 


HI      30,508   Hi      38,863  | 

I 


Bohemia  40,289    ••      85,361 


Hungary  3,737   §••      11,526 


Poland      7,298 


HH      14,436    H|      48,557    HI 

I 


Russia       3,160     MHi        4,644    ••      35,722 


CHART  I. — CENSUS  DATA  FOR  NATIVES  OF  SPECIFIED  COUNTRIES 
IN  THE  UNITED  STATES,  1860,  1870  AND  1880.* 

Since  so  far  as  our  data  indicate  the  Slavs  in  the 
United   States  in   1850  were   a   negligible   quantity   in 

*For  percentages  and  later  figures  see  Table  15,  page  244. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  213 

point  of  numbers,  we  may  regard  those  registered  in 
1880  as  added  during  this  thirty  year  period.  We  find 
that  in  1880  the  census  figures  were  as  follows: 

TABLE  14.— SLAVS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.     CENSUS 

OF  1880. 

Natives  of  Bohemia 85,361 

"  Poland 48,557  1 

"  Austria 38,663  j-  122,942 

"  Russia 35?722  j 

"  Hungary 1 1,526 

Total 219,829 

It  is  of  course  impossible  to  know  just  what  these 
figures  mean  racially.  The  Bohemian  group  is  evidently 
large,  for  besides  the  bulk  of  those  from  Bohemia  a 
considerable  number  from  Austria  were  probably  Bohe 
mians  (or  Moravians  which  amounts  to  the  same  thing). 
The  123,000  from  Poland,  Austria  and  Russia  were 
probably  mainly  Poles  and  Jews,  though  in  what  pro 
portions  it  is  impossible  to  say.* 

The  character  of  the  immigration  of  this  period- is  es^  An  eco- 
seil^ilL£^^^^^  contrast  with  the  earlier  scatter-  J^^^ 
ing    and    largely    political    movement.     Artisans    from 
villages  and  larger  towns  and  peasants  from  their  fields   ' 
began  to  come  in  numbers,  and  to  come  as  settlers,  with 
their  families  and  their  little  caT^M7''lna1cirig  Their  way 
to  regions  that  were  then  pioneer  country. 

Thoiigh-tlie.  bulk  of  those  who  came  went  West,  like  Political 
our  own  young  men,  to  "grow  up  with  the  country,"  and  mfluence 
for  much  the  same  reasons,  there  were  of  course  still 
those  (as  there  are  today)  who  were  influenced  mainly 
by  hopes  of  a  freedom  that  they  lacked  at  home,  and 
various  political  events  increased  this  element  from  time 
to  time.  The  war  between  Austria 


and    Poles,    and    a    further 


emigration  of  the  latter  was  caused  by  the  Polish  in-     A  | 
surrection  of  1861  and  by  the  course  of  events  in  Prussia      jj  I 

*  It  is  rather  interesting  to  note  the  remark  in  the  census  of 
1860  (p.  xxix):  "Of  Russians  and  Poles  speaking  the  Sclavonian 
language,  this  migration  has  been  inconsiderable  in  amount." 


214        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


\ 


after   the   war   with    France   and   during  the    "Kultur 
Kampf  "  of  the  early  seventies. 

An  instance  of  the  spirit  of  the  men  who  came  for  the 
sake  of  their  political  connections  was  told  me  by  the 
son  of  a  Bohemian  pioneer  in  Texas.  A  friend  from 
the  old  country  visited  the  family  in  their  new  abode. 

"*Why,  Valentine,"  he  said,  "at  home  your  pigs  are 
housed  better  than  you  are  here." 

"That  is  true,"  was  the  sturdy  answer,  "but  I  would 
rather  live  here  in  this  log  house  than  in  a  palace  under 
the  Austrian  government." 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  son  of  a  man  of  this  stamp 
finds  himself  a  person  of  influence  in  his  community — in 
this  particular  case,  judge,  editor,  and  member  of  the 
county  school  committee. 

In  the  Chicago  schools  the  teachers  notice  even  today 
a  difference  among  the  Polish  pupils  between  the  children 
of  men  of  intelligence,  self-exiled  for  the  sake  of  ideals, 
and  of  the  Polish  "man  with  the  hoe."  It  must  be 
said,  however,  that  Polish  children  in  general  are  con 
sidered  good  scholars. 
A  move-  In  this  second  period  appear  for  the  first  time 

Crnent  spon-  \  Q£  SQme  s{ze  and  cojassi&n.  Apparently  Slavs  have  never 
baneousand  v 
unorganized^  immigrated  as  organized  bodies  (unless  we  count  the 
but  grouped'  Moravians  or  some  of  the  Russian  sectaries) ;  but  though 
coming  separately  or  in  little  bands  of  relatives  or  neigh 
bors,  they  have  a  strong  tendency  to  congregate  in  homo 
geneous  groups,  often  made  up  of  people  drawn  together 
not  simply  as  members  of  the  same  national  subdivision, 
but  as  neighbors  in  the  same  home  village.  This  is  the 
natural  result  at  once  of  social  affinities,  intensified  by  iso 
lation  in  a  strange  land  among  people  with  a  strange 
tongue,  and  of  the  fact  that  the  immigrant  who  finds  a 
successful  location  draws  over  acquaintances  from  home 
to  settle  beside  him.  Yet  while  the  bulk  of  our  Slavic 
population  are  in  larger  or  smaller  colonies  of  their  own, 
it  will  almost  always  be  noticeable  that  representatives 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  215 

are  to  be  found  dispersed  far  and  wide,  the  scouts,  as  it 
were,  who  may  lead  the  way  to  new  settlements. 

The  two  chief  early  routes  seem  to  have  been  from  Bre-  Early  routes 
menjarTJivel-pbol  to  either  New  York  or  New  Orleans, 
though  in  TfTe'days-of-saiUag.  vessels  there  was  probably 
more  variety  than  today  in  both  the  goal  and  the  char 
acter  of  the  journey.  From  New  York  the  settlers  went 
West,  while  from  New  Orleans,  Galveston  and  the  other 
Gulf  ports  they  pushed  inland,  by  the  great  waterway  of 
the  Mississippi,  then  in  all  the  glory  of  its  steamboating 
era.  Many  of  those  who  entered  at  the  Gulf  ports, 
penetrating  northward,  ultimately  found  the  same  goals 
as  their  countrymen  traveling  overland  from  the  east. 
Many,  however,  did  not  go  so  far  but  stopped  as  we  shall 
see  at  Saint  Louis  or  Cleveland  or  settled  in  Texas  with 
out  journeying  farther. 

It  seems  best  to  consider  separately  the  settlement 
first  of  the  Bohemians,  then  of  the  Poles,  and  finally  of 
other  Slavic  groups. 

BOHEMIAN  SETTLEMENT 

The  earliest  colony  of  Bohemians  was  in  St.  Louis,  In  Saint 

where  ln~TSprtfcw^a4^  L°uis 

church,  and  this  city  has  always  remained  an  influential 
Bohemian  centre. 

Texas  also  earlv  jii&ai^JiioktM^^  The  Texas 


first,  iFls^aid,  was  a  Protestant  pastor  named' Berg-  set1 
man,  from  Silesia,  who  left  home  in  February,  1848, 
and  came  to  Catspring,  near  Austin,  where  he  engaged 
in  farming.  A  letter  from  him  containing  most 
favorable  accounts  of  Texas  fell  accidentally  into  the 
hands  of  another  Bohemian  named  Lesikar,  and  through 
his  persuasions  a  group  of  Bohemians  who  had  been 
thinking  of  emigrating  to  Southern  Hungary  decided 

*  My  account  of  these  Texas  settlers  is  drawn  from  Dr. 
Habernicht's  "History  of  Bohemians  in  America.  Part  III, 
The  State  of  Texas."  The  Study  is  in  Bohemian  and  the  un 
translated  title  will  be  found  in  the  Bibliography. 


2l6        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

with  LeSikar  to  follow  Bergman's  example.  Their 
story  suggests  what  emigration  meant  in  those  days. 
The  voyage  from  Liverpool  to  Galveston  lasted  seventeen 
weeks.  The  vessel  was  crowded  with  Irish  immigrants. 
The  food,  which  was  bad,  was  served  out  raw,  and  each 
family  had  to  cook  for  themselves,  an  arrangement  then 
common.  Half  of  the  party  died  on  the  journey.* 
Early  From  this  beginning,  settlers  from  Bohemia  and 

hardships  Moravia  multiplied  in  Texas,  spreading  into  a  number 
of  counties.  Their  situation  was  nevertheless  a  very 
difficult  one.  The  state  which  had  become  a  part  of  the 
Union  only  three  years  before,  in  1845,  had  long  been  a 
resort  for  the  most  varied  elements.  The  Americans 
generally  carried  on  large  plantations  with  slave  labor,  or 
else  had  great  half  wild  herds.  Cotton  and  cattle  were 
raised  for  traffic  with  neighboring  states  or  with  Mexico. 
Into  such  a  society  came  Bohemians,  Poles  and  Germans, 
singly  or  in  small  groups,  with  a  little  capital  only,  buy 
ing  comparatively  small  farms  and  working  them  them 
selves.  The  Bohemians  generally  held  anti-slavery 
views  which  set  the  Americans  against  them  and  sub- 
N  jected  them  to  all  sorts  of  persecutions.  When  the 
Civil  War  broke  out,  matters  naturally  became  worse. 
"They  fired  on  people  who  wanted  to  avoid  military 
service  as  if  they  had  been  rabbits,  and  if  one  were  caught 
he  had  to  go  as  a  soldier."  Some  of  the  unfortunate 
settlers  went  to  Mexico  for  awhile,  others  are  said  to 
have  hidden  in  the  woods  and  to  have  slept  in  hollow 
trees.  Added  to  these  troubles  were  the  war  prices. 
No  goods  came  through  from  the  Northwest,  and  what 
was  brought  in  from  Mexico  was  very  dear. 

I  am  tempted  to  cite  instances  of  the  careers  of  some 
of  these  early  Texan  settlers,  for  instance  that  of 
Joseph  Petr,  whose  father  emigrated  from  Moravia  when 

*  Friedrich  Kapp,  long  one  of  the  New  York  State  Commis 
sioners  of  Immigration,  in  the  years  before  the  Federal  authori 
ties  had  assumed  responsibility,  gives  similar  accounts  of  the 
horrible  conditions  of  the  early  steerage.  Indeed,  the  literature 
of  the  subject,  both  history  and  fiction,  is  full  of  them. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  21  7 

the  boy  was  eleven — one  of  six  children  who  could  no 
longer  be  supported  in  the  old  home.  The  new  farm  was 
bought  on  credit,  the  whole  family  had  to  work  early 
and  late,  and  schooling  was  out  of  the  question.  After 
five  years  the  Civil  War  broke  but,  the  eldest  son  died 
in  the  ranks  and  the  sixteen-year-old  Joseph  was  em 
ployed  carting  provisions  for  the  soldiers.  After  the 
war  he  learned  blacksmithing,  and  helped  with  his 
father's  farm  and  store.  He  prospered  and  came  to  own 
a  thousand  acres  of  good  land  on  which  twenty  Bohe 
mian  families  found  their  living  as  employes  or  tenants. 
He  held  a  number  of  offices,  served  as  postmaster,  and 
was  twice  elected  to  the  state  legislature. 

Thus  their  native  persistence  carried  the  Bohemians 
through  the  dark  days  of  their  first  settlement.  Since 
1904  Texas  seems  to  have  again  begun  to  attract  Bohe 
mians  in  considerable  numbers:  in  the  four  years  1905- 
1908  over  4000  gave  Texas  as  their  destination.  In  1906 
their  number  in  the  state  was  locally  estimated  at  60,000, 
a  respectable  and  respected  element  of  the  farming  dis 
tricts.* 

One  of  the  earliest  goals  of  the  Bohemians  as  well  as  Wisconsin's 
of  Poles,  Germans  and  Scandinavians,  Belgians,  and  many  caf  ^ts"1" 
other  peoples,  was  Wisconsin,  and  the  attitude  of  that 
state  toward  immigration  probably  did  a  good  deal  to 
bring  this  about.     A  fact  that  is  easily  forgotten  in  the 
present  state  of  feeling  in  regard  to  immigration  is  the 
eager  and  official   solicitation  of  immigrants  that  was 
carried  on  for  years  by  various  states.     Mr.  Gregory,  in  a 

*  Habernicht  remarks  (page  128),  "The  Moravians  in  Texas, 
conservative  in  character,  have  not  acquired  the  energy  and 
alertness,  the  business  spirit,  requisite  in  America;  so  that  they 
do  not  accomplish  as  great  a  success  as  they  might  with  their 
industry,  honesty  and  thrift.  Of  late  years  their  main  crop  has 
suffered  from  the  ravages  of  the  cotton  weevil."  Habernicht 
here  speaks  of  Moravians.  I  have  used  the  word  Bohemian  as 
equivalent  to  Cech  (Chekh)  and  have  applied  it  to  natives  of 
Moravia  and  Bohemia  alike.  For  some  further  account  of  Texas 
settlement  see  page  228. 


2l8        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Federal 
encourage 
ment 


paper  contributed  to  the  Proceedings  of  the  State  His 
torical  Society  of  Wisconsin  in  1901,  writes  as  follows: 

"The  men  who  controlled  the  destinies  of  Wisconsin 
.  .  .  framed  the  state  constitution  and  the  early  statutes 
in  such  a  way  as  to  encourage  foreign  settlers  to  feel  at 
home  here,  and  in  this  respect  Wisconsin's  laws  have 
never  changed.  During  a  large  part  of  the  time  since 
admission  to  the  Union  (in  1848),  an  active  propaganda 
to  encourage  immigration  has  been  carried  on  by  the 
state." 

Wisconsin,  like  various  other  states,  appointed  a  Com 
missioner  of  Emigration  to  stimulate  the  inflow.  In  185 2 
the  first  man  to  fill  this  office  reported  to  the  Governor 
that  he  had  been  in  New  York  distributing  pamphlets  in 
English,  German,  Norwegian  and  Dutch,  describing  the 
resources  of  the  state.  These  were  handed  to  immi 
grants  on  vessels  and  in  hotels  and  taverns,  and  sent 
abroad;  editorials  and  advertisements  were  inserted 
in  foreign  papers,  and  he  and  his  assistants  talked 
personally  with  as  many  immigrants  as  possible.  He 
himself  says: 

"It  is  hardly  possible  to  make  a  true  estimate  of  the 
influence  exerted  by  the  agency  in  New  York.  In 
formation  has  emanated  from  there  in  every  direction, 
and  is  now  spread  over  a  large  and,  for  our  object,  most 
valuable  part  of  Europe." 

After  four  years  this  state  canvass  for  immigrants  was 
suspended  for  a  time,  but  in  1864  the  Wisconsin  legisla 
ture  memorialized  Congress  for  the  passage  of  national 
laws  to  encourage  foreign  immigration  on  the  ground  that 
labor  was  scarce,  owing  to  the  war,  and  that  wages  had 
more  than  doubled.  Whether  or  not  as  a  consequence 
of  this  request,  Congress  did  in  the  same  year  pass 
an  act  to  encourage  immigration,  which,  however,  was 
repealed  in  March,  1868.* 

Again,    in     1879,     Wisconsin     established     a     State 

*  Hall,  P.  F.:  "Immigration  and  its  Effects  upon  the  United 
States,"  page  202. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  219 

Board  of  Immigration  to  increase  and  stimulate 
immigration"  with "'  'atfthprity  to  disseminate  infor 
mation.  The  official  circulars  mentioned  as  induce 
ments  the  following  points:  climate,  rich  lands  at 
a  nominal  price,  free  schools  and  a  free  university, 
equality  before  the  law,  religious  liberty,  no  imprison 
ment  for  debt  and  liberal  exemption  from  seizure  by  a 
creditor,  suffrage  and  the  right  to  be  elected  to  any  office 
but  that  of  governor  or  lieutenant  governor  on  one 
year's  residence,  whether  a  citizen  or  not  (intention  to 
become  one  having  been  declared) ;  and  full  eligibility  to 
office  for  all  actual  citizens.  "There  is  never  an  election 
in  the  state,"  one  circular  continues,  "that  does  not  put 
some,  and  often  very  many,  foreign-born  citizens  into 
office.  Indeed,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  foreigner  in 
Wisconsin,  save  in  the  mere  accident  of  birthplace; 
for  men  coming  here  and  entering  into  the  active  duties 
of  life  identify  themselves  with  the  state  and  her  in 
terests,  and  are  to  all  intents  and  purposes  American." 
We  are  told  "The  language  above  used  is,  except  in 
rhetoric,  identical"  with  that  in  an  edition  of  1884. 

Besides  this  direct  encouragement  by  the  state   "a   Other  forms 
similar  canvass  was  maintained  by  counties  and  land  °°  1 
companies,  and  at  a  later  stage  by  railway  companies, 
some  of  them  sending  agents  to  travel  in   Europe."* 
Of  such  solicitation  at  the  very  beginning  of  Bohemian 
immigration  I  found  tradition  still  mindful  in  the  old 
country. 

Mr.  Senner,  formerly  Commissioner  of  Immigration  at 
the  Port  of  New  York,  said  before  the  Industrial  Com 
mission  (Vol.  XV,  1901,  page  182)  that  the  effect  of  such 
advertisement  is  exaggerated. 

"There  is  no  doubt  that  people  have  been  educated  to 
take  our  advertisements  with  a  large  grain  of  allowance. 
They  look  rather  more  sceptically  on  these  matters  than 

*  For  all  this  see  Gregory,  J.  G. :  "Foreign  Immigration  to 
Wisconsin."  Proceedings  of  State  Historical  Society  of  Wis 
consin,  1901. 


220        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

they  did  fifteen  to  twenty  years  ago."  Michigan, 
Wisconsin  and  a  few  other  states  maintained  permanent 
colonization  bureaus  in  Europe,  "but  their  success  is 
very  small." 

Granting  that  experience  has  led  intending  immigrants 
to  discount  solicitations  to  emigrate,  it  is  still  true  that 
immigrants  have  felt  themselves  directly  and  officially 
invited  and  urged  to  come,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
one  often  finds  them  aggrieved  and  hurt  at  the  tone  of 
too  many  current  references  making  foreigners  synony 
mous  with  everything  that  is  unwelcome. 

Bohemians  Wisconsin  was,  as  has  been  explained,  a  favorite  goal 
in  Wisconsin  with  both  Bohemians  and  Poles.  The  Bohemians  were 
at  Caledonia,  near  Racine,  on  Lake  Michigan,  in  1844. 
The  first  Bohemian  newspaper,  Slavie,  was  published 
here,  and  here  the  Bohemian  free-thought  movement 
seems  to  have  first  taken  shape.  Within  a  few  years 
there  were  settlements  in  Milwaukee  (then  a  town  of 
about  30,000), and  in  Manitowoc  and  Kewaunee  counties. 
The  latter  now  contains  the  largest  colony  of  Bohemians 
in  Wisconsin  (excepting  perhaps  that  in  Milwaukee) ;  in 
1890  it  was  estimated  that  three-sevenths  of  the  popula 
tion  of  Kewaunee  county  were  of  Bohemian  extraction. 

It  is  therefore  particularly  fortunate  that  the  col 
lections  of  the  Wisconsin  Historical  Society  contain  the 
unpublished  account  of  the  early  days  there  which  I 
have  already  cited,  and  that  Miss  Nan  Mashek  has  pub 
lished  a  spirited  if  brief  account.*  I  quote  from  the 
former : 

"The  first  Bohemian  settlers  in  Kewaunee  County 
came  from  Milwaukee.  The  inducement  offered  was 
the  opportunity  given  for  obtaining  cheap  but  good 
farming  lands  for  which  the  purchasers  could  pay,  and 
support  themselves  at  the  same  time  from  the  timber 
found  upon'  them.  The  succeeding  immigrants  came 
directly  from  Bohemia  by  the  solicitation  of  their  friends 

*  "Bohemian  Farmers  of  Wisconsin."  Charities,  XIII,  pages 
211—214  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  221 

and  relatives  already  settled  here,  and  almost  without  { 
exception  their  reason  was  a  desire  to  better  their  mate-3 
rial  condition.     Most  of  them  immediately  bought  lands, 
usually  with  borrowed  money,  and  at  once  settled  upon 
them,  while  others  worked  in  the  large  saw  mills  at 
Kewaunee  for  a  part  of  the  year,  and  upon  their  lands 
during  the  remainder.     In  about  1870  the  larger  part  of 
the  immigrants  were  already  established  here,  and  since 
then  but  few  have  come. 

"Though  in  certain  parts  of  Bohemia  peculiarities  in  Pioneer 
dress  and  customs  are  even  now  prevalent,  they  rapidly  con(htions 
disappeared  among  the  settlers  here,  until  there  is  now 
none  at  all  strikingly  noticeable.     Very  little^^pjej^n^U-^^*^"^, 
property  was  brought  along,  except  the  ancestral  feather 
bed  wnicTi  yeFplays  such  a  prominent  part  in  the  baggage 
of  the  immigrants  of  today;    each  family  was  usually 
provided   with   some   money,    though   funds   were   not 
absolutely  necessary,  because  while  clearing  his  newly 
purchased  farm  the  settler  was  sure  of  support  from  the 
timber  cut.     The  greatest  dimcultiejsjmc^unj^^ 
due  tMj]^Jilt2PJZJ^  nnitht  lath  ttf  t^nrU 

During  the  first  year  Manitowoc,  at  a  distance  of  thirty 
miles,  was  the  nearest  market,  and  the  roads  to  that  were 
corduroys  through  swamp  lands.  When  the  village  of 
Kewaunee  was  settled,  the  condition  of  affairs  was  im 
proved  but  even  then  some  farmers  were  obliged  to 
carry  to  town  on  their  backs  the  split  shingles  they  had 
made,  and  receiving  their  pay  in  flour,  return  home  with 
the  sack  on  their  shoulders.  In  the  fall,  supplies  were 
laid  in  for  the  whole  winter,  and  if  ever  the  flour  gave 
out,  hand  coffee  mills  were  used  to  grind  whatever  wheat 
they  might  have.  .  .  .  By  far  the  greater  part  of  the  \ 
Bohemian  emigrants  belonged  to  the  agricultural  and 
common  laboring  classes  in  the  old  country." 

Another  Kewaunee  County  informant,*  writing  of  the 
old  times,  says: 

*  Letter  from  Louis  Bruemmer.     MSS.  in  library  of  Historical 
Society  of  Wisconsin. 


222        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

"The  old  settlers  suffered  hardships;  having  bought 
lands,  and  their  funds  [being]  exhausted,  they  were 
compelled  to  carry  shingles  on  their  shoulders,  made  by 
hand,  to  Kewaunee  or  Ahnapee  in  exchange  for  the 
necessaries  of  life,  traveling  on  foot  from  twenty  to 
thirty  miles.  The  writer  lived  in  an  adjoining  town  of 
Mishicott  in  Manitowoc  county,  in  1854,  and  had  his 
feet  frozen  in  making  cord  wood  at  thirty-seven  and  one- 
half  cents  per  cord,  where  they  charged  him  board  with 
$2.50  per  week.  He  was  then  fourteen  years  old,  and 
was  expected  to  earn  the  pork  and  bread  for  the  family ; 
he  made  shingles  while  his  feet  were  healing,  and  after 
being  able  to  walk,  loaded  2000  shingles  on  a  hand  sled 
to  Mishicott,  three  miles  distant,  to  trade  for  flour  and 
pork;  but  on  trying  the  merchants,  was  sorry  to  find  that 
they  would  give  'store  pay'  for  shingles,  except  flour  and 
pork,  which  must  be  paid  for  in  cash;  but  our  cash  was 
gone;  finally  the  merchant  relented,  and  furnished  me 
with  twenty  pounds  [of]  flour  at  the  rate  of  $14  per 
barrel,  and  the  flour  was  of  the  same  quality  as  middlings 
of  the  present  time.  Such  were  the  conditions  in  this 
county  from  1850  to  1857 ;  there  was  a  poor  market  for 
everything. 

Success  "The  soil  was  good,  covered  with  heavy  timber  such 

as  maple,  beech,  hemlock,  cedar,  basswood  or  linden, 
black  and  white  ash,  oak  and  elm.  But  through  hard 
work  and  industry,  lands  were  cleared,  and  in  a  couple 
of  years  they  were  glad  that  they  had  a  log  cabin,  a 
yoke  of  oxen,  a  cow  and  twenty-five  hens,  and  from  five 
to  twenty  acres  improved  land,  which  partially  supported 
the  family.  The  money  and  clothing  were  generally 
earned  by  the  heads  of  the  families  in  saw  mills,  of 
which  there  were  plenty  within  a  radius  of  twenty  miles, 
and  their  lot  was  better  then — even  a  hundred  per  cent 
better — than  in  their  European  homes." 

We  will  return  to  a  consideration  of  this  thrifty  county 
later,  in  discussing  farming  conditions. 

Another    similar   informant,    from    Crawford    county 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  223 

(Wis.),  says  that  the  Bohemians,  who  are  from  all  parts 
of  the  old  country,  first  came  in  1857,  having  been  in 
other  states  first.  They  came  individually.  The  first 
six  men  (the  original  gives  their  names)  bought  land  of 
the  government,  but  later  comers  bought  from  resident 
farmers  or  speculators.  The  numbers  have  increased 
gradually.  Most  came  from  Chicago,  a  few  direct  from 
Bohemia  on  invitation  of  their  relatives  here.  A  few 
have  sold  and  gone  farther  west.  They  are,  as  a  class,  in-  [ 
dustrious,  clean,  frugal,  honest,  patriotic,  peace-loving, 
and  intelligent.  Their  sons  and  daughters  speak  both 
English  and  Bohemian,  but  they  seldom  intermarry 
with  other  nationalities.  They  follow  the  American 
mode  of  farming,  but  are  more  industrious.  "The  effect 
on  their  neighbors  is  Grand,  as  they  envy  each  other  for 
the  common  good,"  says  our  informant. 

In  spite  of  their  industry,  however,  not  all  of  these 
early  Bohemians  succeeded.  Many,  I  was  told,  lost 
their  land  in  the  panic  of  1859  for  a  few  dollars'  indebted 
ness,  and  had  to  abandon  farming  and  join  some  city 
colony,  many  going  to  St.  Louis. 

St.  Louis,  Texas  and  Wisconsin  are  not  the  only  seats  Other  set- 
of  early  settlements.     There  were  Bohemian  colonists,   ™ements 
says  Mr.  Rudis  Jicinsky,  in  an  article  in  the  Cedar  Rapids 
Gazette,  at  about  the  same  time  in  Wisconsin,  New  York,    < 
Ohio,   Illinois,   Michigan,   Minnesota,   Iowa  and  Texas.* 
Yet  the  wooded  country  of  Wisconsin  and  Minnesota, 
where  the  timber  supplied  a  source  of  income  from  the 
first,  was   sought   earlier   than  the  more  fertile  prairie 
districts.! 

The  Bohemian  settlements  on  the  rich  levels  of  Iowa   Bohemians 
were  generally  not  only  later  than  those  to  the  north,  in  Iowa 
but  were  commonly  made,  not  directly  from  the  old 
country,  but  as  a  second  stage  by  settlers  moving  from 
Wisconsin. 

*  Cedar  Rapids  Gazette,  June  14,  1906,  page  n. 
t  See  page  324  for  a  comparison  of  timber  and  prairie  land  for 
settlement. 


224        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Pioneer 
stories 


Loss  of  so 
cial  status 
in  America 


Two  stories  which  I  gleaned  from  a  family  of  these 
early  Iowa  settlers  had  several  points  of  interest.  The 
father's  family,  of  Bohemian  peasant  stock,  came 
about  1854  to  Galveston,  and  made  its  way  thence  by 
steamer  to  Houston,  Texas,  then  a  small  place.  The 
Bohemian  settlers  there  seemed  unprogressive,  the  talk 
of  yellow  fever  was  not  cheering,  the  water  was  bad,  the 
insect  plagues  intolerable,  and  sleep  out  of  the  question. 
The  family  quickly  decided  to  push  on  to  St.  Louis, 
which  meant  going  back  to  Galveston  to  take  the  St. 
Louis  steamer.  On  the  Mississippi  boat  there  was  a  set 
of  roughs,  and  a  row  took  place  in  which  one  man  was 
killed.  The  mother  used  to  tell  how  one  of  these  men 
stood  and  looked  at  the  little  boy  as  he  lay  asleep. 

The  father  was  disgusted  with  the  South  after  these 
experiences,  and  decided  to  go  to  Racine,  Wisconsin, 
by  way  of  Galena  and  Chicago.  In  Chicago  the  father 
fell  sick  and  died,  but  the  family  finally  reached  Racine. 
They  did  not  remain,  however,  but  joined  a  party  of  their 
countrymen  going  to  Linn  county,  Iowa,  to  settle. 
There  were  perhaps  four  families  in  the  party,  each 
with  its  yoke  of  oxen.  In  Iowa  the  son  prospered, 
until  today  his  fields  stretch  over  the  wide  rolling  slopes 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  see,  and  his  farmhouse  is  given  over 
to  his  superintendent,  while  he  lives  with  his  family  in 
the  town.  In  Iowa  he  met  his  wife,  whose  family  came 
from  Bohemia  a  few  years  earlier  than  his. 

The  wife's  story  is  typical  of  the  not  uncommon  case 
where  the  transition  to  America  means  a  fall,  not  a  rise, 
in  social  status.  Her  family  were  cultivated,  well-to- 
do  people.  One  son,  being  involved  in  the  revolution 
of  1848,  was  sent  to  America  with  family  money 
to  invest.  The  members  of  the  family  at  home  under 
stood  that  he  was  succeeding,  and  decided  to  join 
him,  but  on  arrival  they  found  themselves  stranded,  as 
the  money  entrusted  to  the  son  had  been  swallowed  up 
in  a  business  misadventure.  Moreover,  by  a  tragic 
coincidence  of  two  accidents  to  letters,  they  lost  touch 
with  another  son  who  had  remained  in  Europe.  He  as 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  225 

well  as  the  family  had  moved,  and  on  both  sides  letters 
were  returned  as  impossible  to  deliver.  The  family 
came  first  to  New  York,  then  went  on  to  Wisconsin,  and 
from  there  to  Iowa,  going  by  train  as  far  as  Milwaukee. 

On  their  way  to  Iowa  they  stopped  at  a  place  where  one 
of  the  party  had  a  log  cabin,  and  here  they  finally  spent 
a  whole  season,  three  families  sharing  its  inconveniences. 
Blocks  of  wood  were  used  for  chairs,  and  bedframes  were 
made  on  the  model  of  a  saw-horse.  A  hole  covered  with 
boards  served  as  a  cellar  in  which  to  store  potatoes. 

In  April,  1852,  they  started  out  again  in  regular  immi 
grant  fashion.  The  family  had  only  one  wagon  for  all 
their  luggage,  and  the  daughter,  who  told  me  the  story, 
then  seventeen,  made  the  three  weeks'  journey  on  foot. 
Every  few  miles  was  a  farmhouse  with  the  sign  "tavern," 
and  at  the^e  taverns  they  would  get  their  meals. 

They  fihally  reached  Cedar  Rapids,  which  now,  with  Life  in 
25,000  people,  is  the  sixth  city  of  Iowa,  but  it  was  then  a 
little  place  with  some  thirty  houses,  the  people  Americans 
and  a  few  German  laborers.  The  chief  man  of  the 
settlement,  a  Judge,  asked  the  father  if  he  did  not  have 
a  daughter  who\would  come  and  work  at  his  house.  So 
this  delicately  reared  girl,  who  had  been  brought  up  to 
go  to  school,  sew  and  embroider,  "not  even  accustomed 
to  wash  the  dishes,"  went  out  to  service  on  a  pioneer 
farm.  None  of  the  family  were  used  to  hard  work,  and 
it  killed  the  father  in  a  year.  But  the  young  are  strong 
to  endure,  and  the  daughter  grew  up  and  married  the 
prosperous  Bohemian  farmer  whose  story  has  already 
been  told.  Their  children,  girl  and  boys  alike,  have  had 
college  educations,  and  the  son,  on  a  recent  trip  to  Europe, 
found  their  relatives  there,  one  cousin  a  professor  in  the 
University  of  Vienna,  another  cousin  teaching  Greek  in  a 
seminary,  and  an  uncle  the  owner  of  a  large  factory. 
The  mother,  while  glad  to  have  news  of  her  kin,  would 
not  like  to  have  her  European  relatives  see  her  American 
environment.  She  cannot  forget  what  she  felt  to  be  the 
degradation  of  her  barefoot,  hardworking  girlhood. 
15 


226        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Cleveland 
colony  of 
Bohemians 


Occupa 
tions 


Ohio  was  the  seat  of  another  early  Bohemian  colony, 
situated  in  and  about  Cleveland,  where  the  first  comers 
arrived  about  1848.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  just 
as  Wisconsin  was  the  first  goal  of  Bohemians  who  later 
went  to  Iowa,  so  Wisconsin  was  also  the  intended  desti 
nation  of  those  who  staTteTTTK^^  fts 
see4^--ttr1Se~otteir"lne  case,  trie  earliest  were  Jews,  but 
true  Bohemians  came  directly  after;  by  1855  there  were 
19  families,  and  in  1869  their  numbers  had  grown  to 
over  3000. 

In  spite  of  all  the  hardship  of  the  pioneer  days,  doubly 
difficult  to  those  who  came  from  a  very  different  sort  of 
life  at  home,  the  old  people  often  look  back  with  regret 
to  the  "good  old  times"  when  numbers  were  less  and 
intimacy  more,  and  when  the  very  fact  of  being  strangers 
together  in  a  strange  land  made  internal  differences  of 
religious  opinion  or  social  class  seem  trivial. 

One  old  lady  who  came  in  1853  said:  "At  first  it  was 
very  hard,  for  the  Americans  looked  upon  us  with 
distrust  or  rather  aversion,  which  I  could  never  explain 
to  myself.  Later  I  learned  that  it  was  only  our 
customs — our  bare  feet  and  handkerchiefs  over  our 
heads — that  they  objected  to." 

Of  the  old  settlers  many  were  farmers,  though  their 
children,  like  others,  Have  ^nrre~ta*fgely  come  to  the 
cities.  At  -l^ir-t^T'-'^prTrt-^r,  hrrnrvft,  rnd  trades.  In 
1869,  when  the  Cleveland  colony  numbered  1749"  males 
and  1503  females,  there  were  120  carpenters,  builders, 
coopers,  etc.,  84  masons  and  stone  cutters,  56  tailors, 
50  machinists  and  smiths  of  various  sorts,  44  shoe 
makers,  22  inn-keepers,  17  butchers  and  bakers,  15  store 
keepers,  13  professional  musicians,  n  iron  moulders, 
while  others  were  furriers,  tanners,  harness  makers, 
upholsterers,  watchmakers,  dyers,  cobblers,  bookbinders, 
printers,  brewers,  etc.  Fifty  girls  were  at  service  on 
farms.* 


*  "The  Bohemian  Colony  and  Bohemian  Societies  in  Cleve 
land,  Ohio,  in  North  America,  published  by  the  Bohemians  of 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  227 

The  Bohemian  settlements  further  west,  in  Nebraska, 
the  Dakotas  and  Oklahoma,  belong  mainly  in  the  period 
after  1880,  although  those  in  Nebraska  began  in  the 
sixties. 

The  chief  city  colonies  of  Bohemians  ,^fffre  founded  Citvcolo- 
earlv^utdid^  in  St.  Louis,  ]^;jan<°in 

the  first  to  be  of  importance,  has  already  been  spoken  of.  New  York 
The  colony  in  New  York  made  its  chief  gains  in  the 
seventies;  according  to  the  census  it  rose  during  this 
decade  from  1487  to  8093,  multiplying  itself  between 
five  and  six  times  between  1870  and  1880,  while  in  the 
twenty  years  from  1880  to  1900  it  did  not  quite  double. 
As  already  said,  many  came  to  New  York  from  Kutna 
Hora  as  a  result  of  a  strike  in  the  government  tobacco 
factory  there  in  1878  (?),  and  this  brought  it  about  that 
many  Bohemians  went  into  cigar  making  in  New  York, 
fresh  comers  being  drawn  into  a  trade  which  already  oc 
cupied  many  of  their  fellow  countrymen.  (See  page  357.) 

The   Bohemian  colony   in   Chicago,  already  in    1870,   Bohemians 
when  the  census  gave  it  6277,  the  largest  in  the  country,  in  Chicago 
closely  reflects  the  general  movement.     The  first  settlers,  | 
coming   apparently   about    1851,   were   political   exiles;  V 
later  there  was  a  more  numerous  and  less  select  influx  of  ; 
peasants  and  artisans.*     After  the  fire  of  1871  came  a  v 
stream  of  skilled  laborers,!  and  as  custom  tailoring  was 
then  a  good  trade  in  Chicago,  many  Bohemians  went  into 
it.     Unfortunately  the  Bohemians  as  well  as  Bohemian 
Jews  are  to  be  found  in  large  numbers  in  sweat-shops. 

Cleveland  on  the  occasion  of  the  Ethnographical  Exhibition  in 
Prague  in  the  year  1905,"  pages  13-27.  The  book  is  in  Bohemian. 
The  original  title,  untranslated,  will  be  found  in  the  Biblio 
graphy  under  Bohemians  in  the  United  States. 

*  The  late  Mrs.  Humpal-Zeman  in  her  article  in  "Hull  House 
Maps  and  Papers"  (1895)  wrote:  "Among  these  earlier  emi 
grants  were  men  of  cultivation  and  energy,  who  loved  liberty  so 
well  ^  that  they  were  ready  to  undertake  all  manner  of  menial 
service  for  her  sake;  and  thus  one  would  often  find  men  of  edu 
cation  and  high  social  standing  engaged  in  street  sweeping, 
cigar  making  and  other  humble  occupations;  and  graduates  of 
the  University  of  Prague  working  for  $2.50  and  $4  a  week." 

f  Humpal-Zeman,  Josefa:  "Bohemian  Settlements  in  the 
United  States."  Industrial  Commission,  XV,  page  507. 


228        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Bohemians  A  subject  which  certainly  should  be  treated  in  an 
theCivif8  1  historical  account  of  Slavs  in  America,  but  which  I  can 
War  only  touch  upon  without  in  any  way  doing  justice  to  it, 

is  the  service  of  both  Bohemians  and  Poles  during  the 
Civil  War.  The  anti-slavery  sentiment  of  the  former 
has  already  been  alluded  to,  and  the  first  regiment  that 
went  from  Chicago  to  fight  for  the  Union  is  said  to  have 
been  a  Lincoln  rifle  company  that  some  "  Bohemian- 
Slavonian "  young  men  had  organized  in  1860.*  The 
dominating  feature  in  the  great  Bohemian  National 
Cemetery  in  Chicago  is  the  soldier's  monument,  just  such 
a  monument  as  stands  on  every  village  common  in  New 
England;  and  perhaps  nothing  so  much  as  this  visible 
sign  of  blood  shed  in  the  same  cause  bridges  the  differ 
ence  of  national  feeling. 

POLISH  SETTLEMENT 

Polish  colo-   r     To  turn  now  to  the  other  important  body  of   Slavic 
TexaT  /immigrants  of  this  period,  the  Poles,  we  find  that  they, 

'  as  well  as  the  Bohemians,  came  early  to  Texas,  and  at 
Panna  Marya  (the  Virgin  Mary)  their  oldest  settlement 
in  that  state,  the  first  Polish  church  in  America  was 
founded  in  1855.  I  had  an  interesting  talk  with  a  son  of 
one  of  the  original  colonists,  who  spoke  gladly  of  the  old 
times.  Rev.  Leopold  Moczygemba,t  a  Franciscan  mis 
sionary  in  Texas,  became  acquainted  with  an  Irish 
Catholic  who  owned  land  and  who  suggested  its  use  for  a 
Polish  colony.  At  first  there  were  only  fifteen  or  twenty 
families,  but  in  all  there  came  a  hundred  or  more;  it 
is  not  possible  to  get  precise  numbers. 

The  first  immigrants  came  by  sailing  vessels  to  Gal- 
veston,  up  the  river  to  Indianola,  and  thence  by  wagon, 
arriving  in  the  early  winter.  They  built  huts  of  boughs 
and  such  other  material  as  they  could  find.  The  con- 

*  Humpal-Zeman,  Josefa:  "Hull  House  Maps  and  Papers," 
page  125. 

f  For  an  account,  with  portrait,  of  this  early  settler,  see 
Kruszka,  I,  Ch.  III.  For  general  conditions  in  Texas  at  this 
time,  see  above  page  216. 


PRIESTS  AND  PATRIOTS 

1.  Father  Dombrowski,  born  in  Poland  in  1842;  fought  for  Polish  freedom  in  the  war  of  '63; 
obliged  to  leave  his  country;  entered  the  priesthood  and  came  to  America  in  1869.  In  Detroit  he 
founded  a  Polish  seminary  and  introduced  the  order  of  Felician  sisters  for  teaching,  care  of  orphans, 
etc.  He  died  in  1903,  known  as  the  "  patriot  priest."  2.  Mr.  Tomasz  Siemiradzki  of  the  Polish  Na 
tional  Alliance.  3.  Father  Baraga,  first  bishop  of  Marquette,  Michigan;  Slovenian  missionary  to 
the  Indians  and  author  of  valuable  philological  works  on  Indian  languages.  Born  in  1797  near  Lai- 
bach,  Carniola.  4.  Father  Kruszka  of  Ripon,  Wis.,  author  of  a  history  of  the  Poles  in  America. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  229 

ditions  proved  very  hard,  the  climate  being  dry,  and  all 
the  surroundings  strange  to  them.  They  had  no  trouble 
with  Indians,  but  Texas  in  those  days  was  a  refuge 
for  lawless  characters,  and  the  Americans  were  often 
unfriendly  and  violent.  "They  would  take  a  man 
and  beat  him  just  for  the  fun  of  it,"  I  was  told.  "  Several 
times  a  Pole  bought  a  horse  and  in  the  night  it  was 
stolen  from  him  by  the  men  who  had  sold  it." 
Those  who  had  trades  could  earn  money  by  going  to 
town  "instead  of  scratching  in  dry  ground."  Many 
left  and  went  North.  My  informant  was  nearly  eleven 
years  old  when  his  family  came  to  Texas.  He  served 
on  the  Confederate  side  during  the  war.  He  had  evi 
dently  prospered;  his  place,  which  lay  rather  apart, 
spoke  of  fairly  substantial  farming,  the  house  was  com 
fortable  and  solid,  and  the  son  was  a  good  looking  fellow. 

The  pictures  that  I  carry  away  from  Panna  Marya  are  Panna 
of  the  group  of  children  learning  their  catechism  in  the 
cool  stone  church,  the  girls  in  pink,  blue  and  red  sun- 
bonnets,  the  boys  bareheaded  and  barefooted;  of  the 
priest's  house  with  its  veranda  and  flower  beds;  of  the 
store,  a  typical  country  store,  with  a  saddled  horse 
hitched  under  the  live  oak  before  it;  of  the  big,  bare 
schoolrooms  in  which  the  children  were  being  taught  in 
English,  not  of  the  purest  yet  not  of  the  worst  either — 
the  whole  making  up  an  impression  of  the  quiet,  rather 
stagnant  life  of  men  still  close  to  the  European  peasant, 
yet  by  no  means  untouched  by  America;  a  life  whole 
some  if  not  very  highly  evolved. 

The  Panna  Marya  settlement  was  quickly  followed  by 
other  Polish  colonies  in  Texas,  five  of  which  founded 
churches  the  next  year,  and  eleven  others  in  the  course  of 
the  next  two  decades.*  In  1906  the  Polish  population 
of  Texas  was  estimated  at  between  16,000  and  17,000. 

*  It  is  interesting  to  find  that  Texas  attracted  the  only  repre-  ^. 
sentatives  of  the  little  group  of  the  Slavs  of  the  Lausitz  (the^J 
Wends,  Lusatians  or  Sorbs),  whom  I  have  heard  of  as  immigrants,  "f 
Mr.  Morfill  writes:  "In  the  year  1854  about  400  Sorbs,  for  the  '-. 
most  part  from  Prussia,  emigrated  to  Texas,  under  the  leader-  1 


230        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Poles  in 
Wisconsin 


Course  of 
Polish  set 
tlement 


We  find  that  the  Poles,  like  the  Bohemians,  also 
settled  early  in  Wisconsin,  this  state  now  ranking  fourth 
in  its  number  of  natives  of  Poland.  The  earliest  Polish 
church  in  Wisconsin  was  established  in  Polonia,  Portage 
county,  in  1858.  In  1906,  when  I  visited  Polonia,  it 
counted  360  families  and  rejoiced  in  a  recently  completed 
and  magnificent  church  towering  over  the  country  side, 
and  built  at  a  cost  of  $70,000.  Near  the  church  is  an 
orphanage  (connected  with  the  house  of  the  Felician 
sisters  at  Detroit),  a  parish  school  where,  besides  the  day 
scholars,  are  some  forty  boys  who  board  during  the  winter, 
and  the  modest  residence  of  the  priest.  The  Poles  of  this 
district  came  mainly  from  Russia,  and  were  said  to  be 
"getting  on  better  all  the  time,"  though  in  the  previous 
year  hail  had  destroyed  most  of  the  crops,  even  potatoes. 
The  houses  looked  well  built  and  homelike,  and  the  whole 
impression  of  the  place  was  cheerful,  except  for  the  doubt 
whether  the  expensive  church  did  not  imply  a  vastly  dis 
proportionate  sacrifice.  It  is,  however,  fair  to  note  that 
$36,000  had  been  given  by  the  present  pastor  and  his 
predecessor,  and  that  $18,000  was  still  unpaid. 

The  fact  that  practically  all  Poles  are  Roman  Catholics 
and  zealous  ones,  and  that  a  Polish  group  is  likely  to  found 
a  church  as  soon  as  it  is  at  all  numerous,  makes  the  chro 
nology  of  the  founding  of  their  churches  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  an  outline  of  the  dates  and  locations  of 
their  settlements.  We  are  fortunate  in  having  this 
guide  to  the  history  of  Polish  settlement  in  the  data  as  to 
the  founding  of  Polish  churches  compiled  by  Father 
Kruszka.* 

In  the  twenty-six  years  1855  to  1880  inclusive,  85 
Polish  churches  were  founded;  among  them  were  17 


ship  of  their  pastor,  Kilian.  Here  they  settled  in  Bastrop 
County  and  have  preserved  their  native  language  till  the  present 
day  by  means  of  their  schools  and  two  churches  where  the  service 
is  conducted  in  the  Wendish  language."  "Slavonic  Litera 
ture,"  page  245, 

*  For  list    of  Polish  churches,  with  dates  of  foundation,  for 
the  period  before  1880,  see  Appendix  XVI,  page  459. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  231 

in  Texas,  16  in  Wisconsin,  six  in  Michigan  and  six  in 
Missouri.  These  were  the  earliest  states  in  the  list. 
The  first,  as  has  been  said,  was  that  at  Panna  Mary  a  in 
Texas,  the  second  at  Parisville,  Michigan,  in  1857,  the 
third  that  at  Polonia,  Wisconsin,  described  above.  Of 
six  founded  in  Illinois,  three  were  in  Chicago,  the  first 
of  them  in  1869;  of  seven  in  Pennsylvania,  the  first  was 
in  Shamokin  in  1870.  New  York  city  and  Buffalo  ap 
pear  in  1873,  Minnesota  in  the  same  year  with  three 
churches,  Nebraska  in  1876.  Detroit  is  dated  1872, 
Cleveland,  1875. 

In  fact,  it  is  during  the  seventies  that  the  Polish  move-  Census  data 
ment  to  this  country  first  becomes  of  much  numerical  ^o^ement 
importance.     The  census  shows  a  gain  in  the  decade  1860   1860-1900 
to  1870  of  7000  natives  of  Poland  (we  must  remember 
that  Polish  Jews  are  included),  in  the  next  decade  of 
over  34,000,  figures  destined  to  be  quite  overshadowed 
in  the  two  decades  of  the  next  period,  when  the  gains 
were  99,000  and  236,000  respectively.* 


SLOVENIAN  IMMIGRANTS 

Although   Bohemians  and  Poles  made  up   the  main  Slovenians: 
body  of  Slavic  immigration  previous  to  1880,  members  glsn°P 
of  other  groups  came  also,  and  among  these  certain  early 
Slovenians  have  a  special  interest.     So  far  as  known,  the 
first  of  this  little  nationality   to  come  to  America  was 
neither  a  political  refugee  nor  a  workingman  seeking  a 
better  lot,  but  a  Catholic  missionary  and  saint,  Bishop 
Baraga,f  the  first  of  a  series  of  Slovenian  priests  who  have 

*Cf.  Chart  I,  page  212. 

t  My  counting  Bishop  Baraga  as  a  Slovenian  (rather  than  a 
German)  having  been  questioned,  I  can  only  say  that  over  94  per 
cent  of  the  population  of  Carniola  today  are  Slovenian  in  speech, 
that  Bishop  Baraga  is  counted  by  Slovenians  in  this  country  as 
one  of  themselves,  and  that  the  other  priests  who  followed  him 
from  Carniola  are  constantly  compared  and  contrasted  with 
German  priests.  His  name,  so  far  as  I  know,  neither  bars  nor 
proves  a  Slavic  origin,  though  Nepomuk,  his  father's  middle 
name,  is  that  of  a  Bohemian  saint,  and  his  mother's  name,  de 
Jencic,  is  obviously  Slavic.  That  he  could  speak  Slovenian, 
but  perhaps  as  an  acquired  language,  proves  nothing  either  way, 


232        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

devoted  themselves  to  the  spread  of  their  religion  in  the 
Northwest. 

Mission  to  Frederic  Baraga  was  born  in  1797  in  his  father's  castle 

the  Indians  near  the  beautiful  city  of  Laibach,  the  capital  of  Carniola. 
The  gifted,  fine  natured  boy  was  studying  at  the  Univer 
sity  of  Vienna — law  and  "other  useful  sciences,"  and 
English,  French  and  Italian — when  he  became  convinced 
of  his  vocation,  and  entered  the  priesthood.  After 
some  years  in  a  Slovenian  parish  he  decided  to  fulfil  his 
long-cherished  desire  for  missionary  work  among  the 
Indians  of  the  American  Northwest.  The  Leopoldine 
Society,  established  in  Vienna  in  1829  for  this  work, 
opened  the  way,  and  in  1831  he  was  with  his  new  supe 
rior,  Bishop  Fenwick,  in  Cincinnati.  Here  he  stayed  for 
a  few  months,  until  the  season  should  be  sufficiently  ad 
vanced  for  him  to  go  into  the  wilderness. 

Before  summer  opened  he  was  in  his  chosen  field,  the 
pastor  of  a  flock  of  Indian  converts.  For  twenty-two 
years,  the  happiest  of  his  life,  he  endured  extremities  of 
hardship  and  peril  in  the  work  that  he  loved,  and  his 
elevation  to  the  bishopric  in  1853,  with  its  lessened  op 
portunities  for  personal  work,  was  a  genuine  cross  to  him. 
His  newly  created  see  then  covered  not  only  the  upper 
peninsula  of  Michigan,  but  a  great  part  of  lower  Michigan, 
northern  Wisconsin,  eastern  Minnesota,  and  parts  of 
Ontario,  and  necessitated  exhausting  journeys  on  snow- 
shoes  and  in  canoes.  Once,  for  instance,  this  slight, 
frail  man  walked  on  snowshoes  twenty-four  hours  with 
out  resting,  in  bitter  cold,  through  the  deep  snow,  carry 
ing  a  heavy  pack,  and  with  nothing  to  eat  but  a  piece  of 
dry,  frozen  cake.  Prematurely  aged  by  the  continued 
strain  of  excessive  exposures,  he  died  in  1868,  at  the 
age  of  seventy.  Besides  his  religious  work,  in  which 
he  was  extraordinarily  successful  not  only  in  converting 

since  if  a  German,  this  would  have  been  necessary,  going  as  he 
did  to  a  Slovenian  parish;  and  if  a  Slovenian,  his  family,  which 
was  apparently  of  high  social  position,  would  probably  at  the 
period  of  his  boyhood  have  thought  it  bad  taste  to  talk  any 
language  but  German. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  233 

but  in  moulding  and  uplifting  his  Indians,  Bishop  Baraga 
distinguished  himself  by  his  philological  publications, 
especially  by  an  Ojibway  grammar  and  dictionary,  the 
first,  and  said  to  be  still  the  standard,  work  on  the  sub 
ject.* 

Bishop  Baraga's  career  had  the  not  unnatural  result  Other 

of  making  Catholic   leaders   in  America  desire  more  of  S1?venian 

priests 
his  breed,  while  at  the  same  time  his  influence,  especially 

as  exerted  during  his  occasional  visits  to  Austria,  stimu 
lated  interest  in  the  American  field  among  his  coun 
trymen.  This  partly  explains  the  curious  fact  that 
while  the  Poles  in  America,  perhaps  nearly  3,000,000 
Catholics,  with  a  goodly  share  of  culture  as  well  as  zeal, 
have  had  no  bishop  of  their  own  nationality  until  quite 
recently,  the  much  smaller  and  obscurer  group  of  the 
Slovenians  have  had  five  bishops,  besides  many  priests. 
Of  late  years  their  own  people  have  been  immigrating  in 
considerable  numbers  and  need  Slovenian  pastors,  but 
besides  these,  many  Slovenian  priests  are  in  charge  of  non- 
Slovenian  parishes — especially  in  the  diocese  of  St.  Paul, 
Minnesota.  Speaking  German  as  they  do,  practically  as 
a  second  mother  tongue,  and  being  in  general  excellent 
linguists,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  prove  a  very  useful 
class  of  priests. 

Besides  these  ecclesiastical  representatives  there  were^x Slovenian 
other  early  Slovenian  immigrants  here  and  there  in  the  |pettlements 
country.     For  instance,  in  Calumet,  Michigan,  there  is  a  | 
flourishing  department  store  owned  by  the  descendants 
of  a  Slovenian  who  came  with  a  fellow  countryman  as 
early  as  1856  as  a  peddler  or  traveling  dealer.     Slove 
nians  are  said  to  have  first  appeared  in  Chicago  and  in 
Iowa  about  1863,  and  in  1866  they  founded  their  chief 
farming  colony  in  Brockway,  Minnesota.     (See  page  339.) 
They  were  in  Omaha  in  1868.     About  1873  their  present 
large   colony   in   Joliet   was   founded.     They   began   to 

*  Those  interested  to  know  more  of  this  fine  type  of  a  Roman 
Catholic  missionary  will  do  well  to  read  his  life  by  Father 
Verwyst. 


234        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

come  to  New  York  about   1878,   though  not  in  large 
numbers   till    1893.     Like   most   of   the   smaller   Slavic 
I  groups,  however,  their  mass  migration  falls  after  1880.* 
Besides  the  three  nationalities  just  discussed,  doubtless 
other  Slavic  groups  were  represented  in  the  country  dur 
ing  the  period  before  1880,  but  none  so  far  as  my  very 
imperfect  information  goes  were  of  special  importance 
until  after  the  new  tide  of  immigration  set  in  with  the 
eighties. 

SLAVIC  DISTRIBUTION  IN  1880 

In  spite  of  the  unsatisfactory  character,  for  our  pur 
poses,  of  the  information  supplied  by  the  United  States 
census, t  it  does  give  at  least  certain  interesting  indica 
tions  in  regard  to  the  distribution  of  Slavs  in  this  country. 
We  find  for  instance,  that  natives  of  Austria,  Bohemia, 
Hungary  and  Poland,  were  all  represented  in  every  state 
and  territory,  with  the  single  exception  that  there  was 
no  Hungarian  in  New  Hampshire. 

New  York  state  had  the  largest  group  of  natives  of 
Austria,  Bohemia,  Poland  and  Hungary,  the  total  being 
32,000,  but  these  of  course  included  a  very  large 
number  of  Polish  Jews,  and  other  non-Slavic  elements. 
Wisconsin  probably  had  the  largest  Slavic  population 
among  the  states,  for  her  24,000  natives  of  the  four 
countries  in  question  were  comparatively  free  from  non- 
Slavic  intermixture.  They  included  over  18,000  from 
Bohemia  and  Austria,  and  over  5000  from  Poland.  The 
Illinois  total  stood  only  500  below  Wisconsin's;  in  reality, 
considering  the  large  Jewish  contingent  in  Chicago,  the 
difference  in  Slavic  population  was  doubtless  greater 
than  this  suggests. 

Next   to   these   three   states   come   Minnesota,    Iowa, 

*  For  very  interesting  data,  of  which  I  have  been  able  to 
make  only  a  partial  use,  see  the  manual  prepared  for  Slovenians 
in  America  by  Rev.  F.  S.  Sustersic,  of  Joliet,  Illinois,  and  published 
there  by  the  Amerikanski  Slovenec  press  in  1903,  with  the  title 
of  "Poduk  Rojakom  Slovencem."  (See  also  below,  page26g  ff.) 

f  Discussed" in  Appendix  XV,  page  456. 


HISTORY    OF    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  235 

Nebraska  and  Ohio,  with  n,ooo  to  13,000  each,  mainly 
from  Bohemia.  Michigan  had  over  8000,  of  which 
over  5000  were  from  Poland,  giving  this  state  probably 
the  largest  Polish  group  in  the  country  at  that  time. 

Pennsylvania,  later  to  be  the  Slavic  state  par  excel 
lence,  ranked  in  1880  after  these  eight  states,  with  8,333. 
It  was,  however,  one  of  three  states  that  then  had  over 
1000  natives  of  Hungary,  New  York  and  Ohio  being 
the  others.  Texas  and  Missouri  had  old  and  consider 
able  Bohemian  colonies.  Of  natives  of  the  four  coun 
tries  together,  Kansas  had  over  4000  and  California 
over-  3000,  the  former  mainly  Bohemians,  the  latter 
with  a  number  at  least  of  Dalmatians,  though  there  is 
no  way  of  estimating  how  many  these  were.  Finally, 
it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Bohemians  had  already  made 
their  way  to  Dakota,  1300  strong. 

It  is  at  once  noticeable  how  wide  is  this  distribution 
and  yet  how  large  a  part  of  the  whole  bulk  is  in  the  group 
of  neighboring  states,  Illinois,  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Minne 
sota,  Michigan,  Nebraska,  Dakota  and  Kansas.  Of  the 
Bohemians,  the  most  important  Slavic  group  at  this 
date,  over  70  per  cent  were  in  this  region. 


CHAPTER  XII 


immigratioi 


THE  NEWER  SLAVIC  IMMIGRATION:  SINCE  1880 

Changes  in  With  the  coming  of  the  eighties  the  original  contingent 
of  Bohemians  and  Poles  began  to  be  overlaid  by  a 
much  larger  volume  of  newcomers  differing  in  various  im 
portant  respects  from  the  old.  In  the  first  place,  the 
later  Slavic  immigrants  were  largely  of  nationalities 
previously  little  represented  in  America.  Since  up  to 
1899  the  American  immigration  data  are  classified  only 
by  "country  of  last  permanent  residence"  and  not  by 
nationality,  it  is  not  possible  to  get  any  precise  measure 
of  this  change  in  the  make-up  of  the  Slavic  stream. 

Neither  can  the  beginning  of  the  movement  to  America 
among  the  newer  immigrant  nationalities — Slovaks  and 
Ruthenians,  Slovenians  and  Croatians,  Bulgarians, 
Servians  and  Russians — be  dated  in  any  hard  and  fast 
way.*  Apparently,  as  already  said,  the  impulse  spread 
from  the  Poles  in  Germany  eastward  to  their  brothers  in 
Galicia  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventies,  and  to  the 
Poles  in  Russia  somewhat  later.  The  Slovaks  began  to 
come  in  considerable  numbers  in  the  early  eighties,  and 
the  Ruthenians  at  about  the  same  time. 

These  three  nationalities  converge  in  the  eastern 
Carpathian  district,  and  more  or  less  interpenetrate  one 
another;  and  emigration  to  America  having  once  started, 
it  was  natural  that  so  contagious  a  movement  should 
spread  through  the  whole  Carpathian  group.  More 
over,  among  all  these  peoples  trade  is  largely  in  the 
hands  of  the  Jews,  who  are  apt  to  have  international 

*  Discussion  of  the  origin  and  spread  of  the  emigration  move 
ment  among  the  first  four  of  these  nationalities  will  be  found  in 
the  appropriate  chapters  in  Part  I,  but  for  convenience  it  is  re 
sumed  here  as  a  whole. 

236 


THE    NEWER    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION!    SINCE    l88o    237 

affiliations,  and  it  seems  often  to  have  happened  that 
some  enterprising  Jew  first  among  his  fellow  townspeople 
became  aware  of  the  land  of  promise  across  the  Atlantic, 
explored  and  reported  on  it,  and  thus  set  the  stream  of 
immigration  flowing. 

The  South  Slavs  began  to  come  to  America  somewhat  | 
later.     Though  individual  Slovenians  came  very  early,/ 
as  already  mentioned,  it  was  not  till  about  1892  that  the' 
movement  became  noticeably  important  among  them. 
In   the    Croatian   group,    the    Dalmatians,    sailors   and  ' 
wanderers,  had  sent  now  and  then  an  immigrant  from 
very  early  times,  but  it  was  not  till  toward  the  middle  of 
the  nineties  that  Croatians,  and  especially  Croatians  from 
the  country  back  of  the  coast,  began  coming  in  numbers.! 
Servians  and  Bulgarians  are  still  more  recent  comers, 
numerous  only  since  1902  or  so,  but  growing  rapidly. 
As  to  Russians,  of  66,000  in  the  last  eleven  years  (1899 
to  1909  inclusive),  over  nine-tenths  came  after  1902  and 
over  two-thirds  in  the  last  three  years. 

The  grounds  of  the  earlier  immigration  may  be  said  to ,  Causes  and 
have  been,  roughly,  the  opportunity  of  acquiring  f arm-  •  U^acter 
ing  land  cheaply  if  not  gratuitously,  and  in  a  less  degree 
the  desire  for  the  greater  political  and  religious  freedom 
promised  by  America.     In  the  course  of  time  both  thesej 
grounds  lost  their  importance.     As  the  supply  of  de-  , 
sirable  land  to  be  had  on  easy  terms  diminished,  this 
incentive  to  immigration  grew  weaker,   and  lessening 
political  unrest  in  Western  Europe  allayed  the  other. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  great  industrial  development  of    / 
the  United  States,  following  after  the  Civil  War,  and 
especially  after  the  hard  times  in  the  seventies,  meant  a 
great  increase  in  the  demand  for  labor.     The  Teutonic 
element  of  the  older  immigration,  to  which  the  Bohe 
mian  was  very  similar,  was  not  looking  primarily  for 
wage  jobs  but  for  independence,   especially  the  inde 
pendence  of  the  farm  owner.     The  same  was  largely  true 
of  the  British  immigrants,  English,  Welsh  and  Scotch. 
Besides,  neither  belonged,  in  any  sense,  to  the  class  of 


2?,8        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE     UNITED    STATES 


Immigra- 


cheap  labor.  The  Irish  alone  were  not  enough  to  supply 
the  demand  for  "hands,"  and  French-Canadians,  while 
an  important  element  in  New  England,  have  not  been 
numerous  elsewhere.  Italians  and  Slavs,  proving  most 
available,  were  consequently  called  in  to  meet  the  want. 

These  newer  groups  of  Slavic  immigrants  were  mainly 
drawn  from  more  primitive  districts  than  the  earlier 
groups ;  districts  where  the  population  was  less  in  touch 
with  Western  Europe.  They  generally  came,  not  intend 
ing  to  take  up  farms  and  settle,  but  hoping  to  earn  money 
to  send  back  to  their  homes,  to  which  they  planned 
to  return.  To  this  end  they  sought  the  best  paid 
work  that  they  could  find  in  mines,  foundries,  factories 
and  elsewhere.  A  large  proportion  of  both  the  old  and 
the  new  comers  were  peasants,  that  is,  small  independent 
farmers;  but  among  the  new,  the  proportion  of  men 
possessing  trades  was  less,  and  mere  laborers  were  more 
numerous. 

Historically,  the  American  origin  of  the  more  recent 


tion  induced   immigratiOn,   so  far  as  such  a 
by  em 
ployers 


movement  can  have  a 

specific  origin,  seems  to  have  been  the  desire  of  certain 
Pennsylvania  anthracite  mine  owners  to  replace  the 
employes  that  they  found  hard  to  deal  with,  and  es- 
Irish,  with  cheaper  and  more  docile  material. 
Strikes  were  a  frequent  source  of  friction,  the  Molly 
Maguire  affair  had  caused  great  bitterness,  and  it  was 
natural  that  employers  should  be  on  the  lookout  for  new 
sources  of  labor  supply.  In  a  number  of  places  these  raw 
recruits  of  industry  seem  to  have  been  called  in  as  the 
result  of  a  strike,  and  there  probably  were  plenty  of 
instances  of  sending  agents  abroad  to  hire  men  or  of 
otherwise  inducing  labor  to  immigrate  either  under 
contract  or  with  an  equivalent  understanding.  These 
proceedings  were,  of  course,  perfectly  legal  up  to  1885, 
when  the  law  forbidding  the  importation  of  labor  under 
contract  was  passed. 

One  story  is  that  the  first  comers  were  brought  over 
for  a  certain  mine  operator  at   Drifton,   Pennsylvania, 


THE    NEWER    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION!    SINCE    l88o    239 

through  an  "Austrian"  foreman.  I  have  never  been 
able  to  verify  the  story  nor  to  date  it.  Lwas  interested 
to  run  across  a  Slovak  hatter  in  Baptfeld,  Hungary, 
who  emigrated  about  1880,  and  told  of  having  gone  "to 
Drifton,  where  there  was  an  Austrian  foreman,"  who, 
however,  does  not  appear  to  have  had  anything  to  do 
with  his  emigrating.* 

Mr.  Powderly,  formerly  Commissioner  of  Immigra 
tion,  testified  before  the  Industrial  Commission;  "I 
believe  in  1869,  during  a  miners'  strike  which  was  then 
in  progress,  a  man  who  was  connected  with  one  of  the 
coal  companies  made  the  statement  that  in  order  to 
defeat  the  men  in  their  demands  it  would  be  necessary 
to  bring  cheap  labor  from  Europe,  and  shortly  after 
that,  miners  were  noticed  coming  to  the  anthracite 
region  in  large  numbers  from  Italy,  Hungary,  Russia, 
and  other  far-off  lands. "f 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Powderly  mentions  a  com 
paratively  early  date  at  which  the  importation  of  work 
men  under  contract  was  in  no  way  forbidden.  But  even 
then  such  a  course,  while  legal,  would  have  been  un 
popular  among  workingmen,  and  probably  always  more 
or  less  sub  rosa.  This  may  be  one  reason  why  it  is  very 
hard  to  get  any  definite  information  about  these  matters ; 
but  indeed,  on  both  sides  of  the  water,  the  doings  of  less 
than  a  generation  ago  are  surprisingly  hard  to  ascertain. 

In  Pennsylvania  the  great  early  goal  appears  to  have  f  Influx  into 
been,  as  already  indicated,  the  anthracite  coal  region  °f  i  l 
the  eastern  part  of  the  state.     The  Poles  seem  to  have 
been  the  first  to  come,  and  right  on  their  heels  came  the\ 
Slovaks.     An  informant  from  Hazleton,  a  district  where  / 
they  appeared  quite  early,  gave  me,  in  1904,  the  follow 
ing  account  of  their  first  arrival : 

"They  began  to  come  about  twenty  years  ago;  a  few 
stray  ones  came  earlier.  Nowadays  not  so  many  are 
coming,  but  at  one  time  they  came  in  batches,  shipped 

*This  man's  story  is  told  on  pages  100-101. 
t  Industrial  Commission,  1901,  XV,  page  32. 


240        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

by  the  carload  to  the  coal  fields.  When  they  arrived 
they  seemed  perfectly  aimless.  It  was  hard  for  them  to 
make  themselves  understood,  and  they  would  be  sent 
to  a  man  who  kept  a  saloon  on  Wyoming  street.  They 
would  land  at  the  depot,  and  at  the  beginning  they  would 
spend  the  first  night  on  the  platform.  I  have  quartered 
many  in  my  stable  on  the  hay.  One  pulled  out  a  prayer 
book  and  read  a  prayer.  They  were  mainly  Catholics, 
but  some  were  Protestants,  though  we  did  not  know  that 
till  later.  Sometimes  they  would  go  up  into  the  brush 
and  build  a  fire  and  sleep,  or  if  it  was  too  cold,  just  sit 
there  on  the  ground.  As  soon  as  they  had  earned 
something,  or  if  they  had  a  little  money,  they  would  go  to 
the  baker's  or  get  meat  of  any  cheap  sort,  regardless  of 
its  condition.  Many  were  so  poor  that  they  came  in 
old  army  suits,*  their  belongings  all  in  one  big  bundle. 
At  first  it  was  only  men  that  came." 

Massachu-  An  interesting  account  of  the  coming  of  the  first  Poles 

S?   c  \^n~      ^°  ^e  Connecticut  valley  farms  of  Massachusetts  tells 
Poles  how  here,  as  in  Pennsylvania,  the  influx  was  in  direct 

response  to  a  demand  on  the  part  of  employers  :f 

"It  was  about  twenty  years  ago  that  the  Poles  were  first 
brought  to  the  Connecticut  valley.  In  the  particular  section 
under  consideration,  the  farmers  could  not  hire  men  and  boys 
to  work  on  their  farms,  or  girls  and  women  to  assist  in  the  house 
hold  work.  The  demand  was  pressing.  Charles  Parsons  of 
Northampton,  who  has  since  died,  then  a  pushing,  aggressive 
farmer,  'conceived  the  idea  of  going  to  New  York  and  Castle 
Garden  and  there  securing  enough  of  the  strong  and  sturdy 
immigrants  to  meet  the  demand  for  farm  and  domestic  labor. 

"The  business  grew  rapidly.  Mr.  Parsons  made  weekly 
trips.  Agents  at  New  York  told  the  incoming  immigrants  as 
pleasing  stories  as  was  necessary  to  make  the  Pole  see  the  Con 
necticut  Valley  farms  as  the  promised  land.  Being  new  and 
green  to  America,  the  Pole  at  first  paid  the  highest  price,  and 
was  given  the  small  end  of  the  bargain.  The  agent  in  New  York 
had  to  have  a  fee  for  his  trouble.  Mr.  Parsons  had  to  advance 

*  Some  of  the  peasant  costumes  might  easily  be  mistaken  for 
some  sort  of  uniform. 

t  Boston  Daily  Globe,  June  29,  1902. 


THE  NEWER   SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION:    SINCE    l88o      241 

the  money  to  bring  the  Pole  to  the  farm,  and,  of  course, 
he  had  to  have  a  profit  also.  This  meant,  as  a  rule, 
that  the  immigrant  was  practically  mortgaged  for  $10  when  he 
commenced  work.  It  was,  of  course,  to  be  taken  out  of  the 
wages  to  be  paid  him  for  his  labor.  The  contract  was  not 
particularly  bad  for  either  the  farmer  or  laborer.  The  men  came 
first,  and  were  followed  by  women  and  children.  How  many 
Mr.  Parsons  took  from  New  York  cannot  be  stated.  The 
number  must  have  been  in  the  thousands. 

"  Next  Francis  Clapp  of  South  Deerfield  took  up  the  business. 
Mr.  Clapp  is  one  of  the  substantial  farmers  of  the  Mill  River  dis 
trict  in  South  Deerfield.  He  tells  his  story  in  this  way: 

"I  began  with  the  Poles  in  1889.  I  continued  it  for  six  years, 
and  then  it  was  no  longer  profitable.  The  Poles  had  learned  by 
this  time  to  find  their  own  places.  In  many  cases  their  relatives, 
who  had  been  working  in  this  country  for  several  years,  sent  for 
their  friends.  They  secured  places  for  them.  During  the  six 
years  I  secured  places  for  more  than  three  thousand.  I  sent 
them  to  places  in  each  of  the  six  New  England  states,  men  and 
women,  boys  and  girls.  I  treated  them  well.  I  found  many  of 
them  suspicious,  but  they  were  'square'  as  a  rule.  The  yarns 
told  them  by  some  of  the  New  York  agents  and  by  others  who 
desired  to  make  money  out  of  them,  at  times  caused  trouble. 
One  day  I  brought  eighteen  to  South  Deerfield.  The  New 
York  agent  had  told  them  that  they  had  friends  in  the  vicinity. 
Of  course  I  knew  nothing  of  this.  I  did  not  have  an  interpreter, 
and  we  could  not  talk.  They  realized  they  had  been  deceived, 
and  they  determined  to  go  back  to  New  York.  I  succeeded  in 
keeping  only  three.  The  other  fifteen  walked  back  to  New 
York.  They  were  entirely  without  money.  They  were  fright 
ened,  and  went  in  a  drove. 

"I  had  a  license  from  the  town  to  transact  the  business.  I 
secured  a  girl  as  an  interpreter  who  spoke  seven  different  dialects. 
She  could  also  do  as  much  work  in  the  house  as  any  girl  we  ever 
had.  She  went  back  to  New  York  after  a  time,  married  and  went 
to  work  in  a  cigar  factory.  While  they  were  waiting  for  places 
if  such  happened  to  be  the  case  or  for  other  reasons  they  were 
quartered  at  my  farm. 

"  They  seem,  when  they  first  come,  to  be  entirely  without 
nerves.  They  sleep  well  under  all  conditions.  Their  appetites 
are  enormous.  Of  course  they  are  given  only  coarse  food.  I 
have  known  the  men  to  eat  from  ten  to  fifteen  potatoes  at  a 
meal,  together  with  meat  and  bread.  They  are  very  rarely  sick. 

"They  make  good  citizens.  Almost  without  exception  they 
are  Roman  Catholics,  and  faithful  to  their  obligations.  They 

16 


242        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


"First 
comers 


are  willing  to  pay  the  price  to  succeed.  That  price  is  to  work 
hard  and  save.  They  do  not  keep  their  money  about  them. 
They  place  it  in  the  savings  banks.  When  I  first  went  to  New 
York  to  get  them  it  cost  the  farmer  nothing.  The  Pole  had  to 
pay  the  fee  for  the  New  York  agent,  the  money  which  I  advanced 
to  pay  his  fare  and  other  expenses,  and  the  profit  I  made.  Then, 
as  they  grew  to  know  the  custom  better,  the  Pole  paid  half  and 
the  farmer  half.  Now  the  farmer  has  to  pay  the  whole  when 
the  men  come  from  a  distance. 

"As  a  rule,  the  men  are  hired  for  a  season  of  eight  months,  the 
time  of  outdoor  work  on  the  farms,  At  first  the  contracts,  on  an 
average,  were  about  $80  for  the  eight  months.  The  Poles  were 
given  little  money,  only  as  they  needed  it.  They  had  to  work 
off  the  mortgage  of  $10  which  they  had  contracted.  They  really 
needed  little  money.  They  were  fed  and  lodged,  and,  as  a  rule, 
they  had  sufficient  clothing,  for  they  had  little  occasion  to  dress 
finely.  There  was  a  chance,  too,  that  if  they  had  money  they 
might  leave  the  farmer  without  help,  and  so  the  settlement 
came  at  the  end  of  the  contract  period. 

"  Roman  Skibisky  is  a  young  Pole  who  is  quite  a  daring  specu 
lator  as  well  as  farmer.  He  lives  in  what  was  formerly  one  of 
the  fine  old  mansions  on  the  broad  main  street  of  Sunderland. 
For  several  years  he  has  been  plunging  more  or  less  in  onions. 
Last  fall  he  made  his  heaviest  strike.  All  told,  he  purchased 
about  6500  bushels  of  onions.  They  cost  him  on  an  average  less 
than  forty  cents  a  bushel.  He  kept  them  until  this  spring  and 
sold  them  at  an  average  of  $1.10  a  bushel. 

"Taking  out  the  cost  of  cold  storage  and  insurance  he  netted 
more  than  $4000  on  an  investment  of  about  $2600.  At  one  time 
he  could  have  sold  his  entire  holdings  at  $1.25  a  bushel.  His 
success  has  not  given  him  a  big  head.  He  works  barefooted  in 
the  field  this  season  just  as  though  he  had  not  made  a  rich  strike. 
When  Mrs.  Skibisky  was  asked  what  she  likes  in  this  country  she 
replied,  'Me  happy  here.'  They  have  three  children." 

Just  as  in  emigration  districts  in  Europe  one  hears  of 
more  than  one  "first  man  to  go  to  America,"  so  on  this 
side  there  doubtless  have  been  many  "first  comers." 
Sporadic  and  experimental  trials  of  the  land  of  the  dol 
lar,  both  induced  and  spontaneous,  have  opened  new  fields 
to  immigrants.  As  a  spider  throws  his  first  thin  thread 
across,  and,  his  anchorage  secured,  gradually  thickens 
and  confirms  it,  so  each  immigrant  who  gets  an  economic 
foothold  strengthens  the  bridge  between  the  countries 


THE    NEWER    SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION  I    SINCE    l88o     243 

and  draws  others  over.  Thus  among  the  Slavs  the 
streams  of  immigration,  once  set  flowing,  have  made 
paths  for  themselves,  and  constantly  increased  in  vol 
ume.  As  one  labor  market  becomes  supplied,  new  open 
ings  are  sought  and  found. 

The   character   of   the   later   Slavic   influx   naturally  Distribu- 
produced  a  territorial  distribution  quite  different  from  ^^e^e^er" 
that   of   the   older   movement.     The   new   immigrants,,  demand  for 
guided  in  the  main  by  the  chances  of  good  wages  rather  labor 
than  of  cheap  land,  rapidly  found  their  way  to  the  points? 
where  there  was  a  demand  for  their  undaunted  though 
unskilled  labor.     Once  within  the  country,  no  contract     ( 
labor  law  impeded  the  employers'  agents,  and  men  were 
drafted  off  to  different  places  according  as  hands  were 
needed  in  mine,  coke  oven,  rolling  mill,  lumber  camp  or, 
less  typically,  factory.     Consequently,  while  the  immi 
grants  of  the  preceding  period  had  mainly  gone  to  the 
farming  country  lying  north  and  west  of  Chicago,  these    # 
later  comers,  answering  primarily  the  call  for  labor  in    / 
mines  and  related  industries,  found  their  center  of  gravity 
in  Pennsylvania,  and  spread  thence  through  the  indus 
trial  districts,  especially  the  industrial  districts  of  the 
middle  West,  and  above  all  to  the  various  mining  and! 
metal-working  centres  throughout  the  country. 

But  though  during  this  period  agricultural  settlement*  Farming 
has  been  overshadowed,  it  has  by  no  means  been  lacking, 
especially  among  the  Bohemians  and  the  Poles.  It  has 
taken  place  mainly  in  the  group  of  states  west  of  the 
great  lakes;  but  in  the  Connecticut  valley,  and  else 
where  in  the  East,  the  number  of  "  Polanders"  who  have 
bought  land  is  also  considerable.  I  have  been  surprised 
to  see  in  a  Bohemian  paper  in  New  York  the  space 
devoted  to  advertisement  of  Connecticut  and  other 
farms. 

This  period  has  also  seen  the  formation  of  large  urban   City 
colonies  of  different  nationalities,  in  various  cities  large)  c 
*  Cf.  Chapter  XV  for  a  discussion  of  this  phase  of  settlement. 


244        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


and  small,  colonies  which  often  have  very  curious  and 
interesting  distinctive  features.*  Such  a  movement  as 
this  later  Slavic  immigration  is,  however,  hard  to  deal 
with  historically.  It  has  little  coherent  history,  and 
what  it  has  is  still  too  much  in  the  making  to  be  easily 
studied  or  presented. 

The  general  facts  as  to  the  distribution  of  Slavic 
immigrants  are  shown  on  Map  X,  and  the  data  as  to 
each  nationality  separately  are  given,  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  secure  them,  in  the  next  chapter. 

Numerical       TABLE   15.— NATIVES  OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY,   BOHE- 
increase  MIA,  POLAND  AND  RUSSIA,  1880,  1890  AND  1900. 

Census  data  UNITED  STATES  CENSUS. 


NATIVES  OF 

1880 

1890 

1900 

Austria  

38  66^ 

122    271 

2  7  c  no  7 

Bohemia 

8c  261 

1  18  106 

I  r  6  80  1 

Hungary  

1  1,526 

62,4.1$ 

14.  c  714. 

Poland  

48.5S7 

147   440 

2.8  2.    4O7 

Russia  

•ic   722 

182  64.4 

4.2  1   726      ' 

Total  

2IQ  820 

63,2.  806 

I,  28^,  64.  S 

Total  per  cent  of  foreign 
born  

3  2 

6.8 

134 

The  period  since  1880  has  seen  not  only  changes  in 
the  racial  and  economic  character  of  the  Slavs  coming  to 
the  United  States  but  a  vast  increase  in  their  numbers. 

*  Cf.,  for  the  Bohemians  of  Chicago,  Mrs.  Humpal-Zeman's 
account  in  "Hull  House  Maps  and  Papers,"  and  Dr.  Alice 
Masaryk's  article,  "The  Bohemians  in  Chicago,"  in  Charities, 
XIII,  pages  206-210  (Dec.  3,  1904).  On  Bohemians  in  New  York 
see  Dr.  Jane  E.  Robbins,  "The  Bohemian  Women  in  New  York," 
ibid,  pages  194—196. 

In  the  same  issue  of  Charities  Miss  Laura  B.  Garret  has 
"Notes  on  the  Poles  in  Baltimore,"  and  Miss  Sayles  an  article 
on  "Housing  and  Social  Conditions  in  a  Slavic  Neighborhood," 
which  deals  with  Jersey  City.  Another  study  of  conditions  among 
the  Slavs  of  Jersey  City  by  Miss  E.  T.  White  has  been  published 
by  Whittier  House. 

Of  these  various  accounts  those  by  the  two  Bohemian  women 
first  mentioned  are  much  the  most  valuable  to  those  who  are 
seeking  true  understanding  of  the  life  of  such  a  group  as  is  there 
studied. 


THE    NEWER   SLAVIC   IMMIGRATION!   SINCE    l88o     245 

A  rough  indication  of  this  is  the  large  share  of  the  foreign- 
born  population  that  comes  to  be  made  up  of  natives  of 
Austria-Hungary  (including  Bohemia),  Poland  and 
Russia.  As  shown  in  Table  15,  in  1880  they  were  3.2 
per  cent  of  the  total  foreign  born;  in  1890,  6.8  per  cent; 
in  1900,  13.4  per  cent.  In  absolute  numbers  they  in 
creased  in  the  twenty  years  over  six-fold,  from  something 
over  200,000  to  nearly  1,400,000. 

If  we  consider,  not  population  as  shown  by  the  census, 
but  the  count  of  arriving  immigrants,  the  increase  is 
even  more  striking.  In  the  last  decade  of  our  previous 
period,  1871-1880,  Austria-Hungary  and  Russia*  sent 
us  4.5  per  cent  of  all  immigrants;  in  the  decade  1900-1909 
they  sent  almost  43  per  cent. 

Up  to  1899  the  best  material  that  we  have  consists  of  Immigration 
the  figures,  supplied  by  the  immigration  authorities,  as  statlstlcs 
to  the  countries  from  which  immigration  is  drawn. 
After  that  year  the  immigration  figures  are  also  classified 
according  to  " races  and  peoples"!  and  these  not  only 
give  us  direct  information,  but  throw  light  on  the  racial 
significance  of  the  figures  for  the  different  geographical 
contingents,  which  are  all  that  we  have  to  go  by  for  the 
years  before  1899.  We  find  that  during  the  decadej 
1899-1908,  the  immigration  from  Austria-Hungary  was! 
six-tenths  Slavic.  Since  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that 
this  proportion  would  be  less  in  earlier  years,  and  since 
for  the  same  decade  69  per  cent  of  all  Slavic  immigrants 
came  to  us  from  Austria-Hungary  (and  for  earlier  periods 
this  proportion  would  doubtless  be  still  larger),  the 
Austro- Hungarian  contribution  to  our  immigration  may 
be  taken  as  a  rough  index  of  the  incoming  Slavs. 

A  most  vivid  representation  of  the  growth  of  the 
Austro-Hungarian  stream  is  given  by  Chart  II  (page  246), 

*  Austria-Hungary  presumably  includes  Bohemia  and  Aus 
trian  Poland  (Galicia) ;  Russia  includes  Russian  Poland.  That 
is,  all  Poland  except  German  Poland  is  included.  It  must  of 
course  be  remembered  that  these  groups  of  immigrants  are  very 
mixed  racially. 

f  For  a  criticism  of  this  classification,  see  below,  page  247. 


246        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

drawn  from  the  Immigration  Reports,  which  shows  how 
[this  stream  has  swollen  since  1867.  The  year  1880, 
which  we  have  taken  as  our  landmark,  shows  a  sudden 


CHART  II. 


1877  ----------------  -II  ------------------  5396 


-168509 
-333-^52 

- 265  I3S 

275b93 

-»77I56 
206011 
171989 
•113330 
•114847 
62491 
39797 
33031 
65103 
33401 
-38638 
•57420 
76937 
7I04S 
—  56199 
•34174 
--4  5814 
40265 

-  28680 
•27309 

-36571 

-  27625 
--29I50 

27935 
17267 
5963 
5150 


-4667 
-4425 
-1499 
--553 

1867 ]j 39e 

1866 1 67 

1665 -I 5if 

1864 

1863- 1 93 

1662 1 75 

,861 ' l5 

1660 

jrise,  the  numbers  of  that  year  being  almost  three  times 

/  those  of  the  preceding.     From  this  time  onward  there  is 

an  increase,  which  is,  however,  sharply  checked  in  1893 

by  the  depression  then  beginning.     It  was  not  till  1900 


THE   NEWER  SLAVIC  IMMIGRATION:    SINCE    l88o     247 

that  the  numbers  reacted  from  this  to  their  level  of  1892. 
The  culminating  point  up  to  date  was  reached  in  1907, 
after  which  the  recent  panic  again  lessened  the  influx, ! 
and  started  a  new  period  of  decline,  though  a  brief  one, 
since  the  figures  for  1909  (received  too  late  to  appear  on 
the  chart),  indicate  a  recovery  from  168,509  to  170,191.* 

The  change  spoken  of  above  by  which  the  immigra-  Classifica 
tion  data  are  presented  by  racial  and  national  groups 
instead  of  by  country  of  last  permanent  residence  only,  peoples" 
is  a  great  boon  to  -the  student  of  this  subject.  The 
classification  was  made  by  'one  of  our  best  known 
ethnologists,  the  late  Professor  Otis  T.  Mason,  but  it  is 
probably  impossible  to  make  one  that  shall  be  at  once 
practical  and  quite  logical.  This  one  is  open  to  several 
minor  objections.  Distinct  nationalities  like  Croatians 
and  Slovenians,  Bulgarians  and  Servians,  are  lumped 
together,  and  at  the  same  time  special  place  is  given  to 
a  group  which  is  merely  a  territorial  division;  namely, 
Dalmatians,  Bosnians,  and  Herzegovinians  (who  are 
Servo-Croatians) . 

It  is  hard,  however,  to  explain  or  excuse  the  practice 
of  the  immigration  authorities  of  including  Hebrews 
in  the  Slavic  group,  as  was  done,  for  instance,  on  page 
21  of  the  1906  report  of  the  Commissioner  General  of 
Immigration.  In  the  same  report  the  Lithuanians  and 
Roumanians  are  also  included  as  Slavic,  but  this  is  less 
objectionable  as  these  peoples,  although  they  never 
count  themselves  as  Slavs  nor  are  so  counted  by  others, 
and  although  they  speak  non-Slavic  languages,  probably 
have  much  Slavic  intermixture,  and  considerably  re 
semble,  in  culture  and  habits,  the  neighboring  Slavic 
peoples.  The  same  might  be  said  of  the  Magyars, 
despite  their  Mongolian  type  of  speech. 

The  Jew,  on  the  contrary,  even  the  Polish  or  Russian 
Jew,  is  not  only  remote  in  blood  and  speech  from  all 

*  The  years  are  not  calendar  but  fiscal  years  ending  June  30,  so 
that  e.g.  1907  means  July  i,  1906,  to  June  30,  1907.  How  dif 
ferently  the  various  Slavic  groups  were  affected  by  the  depres 
sion  may  be  studied  in  Appendix  XVII,  page  460. 


Immigra 
tion  by 
countries 


248        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Slavs,  but  moves  in  another  world  of  ideas  and  purposes, 
and  plays  a  very  different  economic  part  both  in  Europe 
and  America.  To  put  him  into  one  class  with  Slavic 
immigrants  in  a  table  of  racial  divisions  can  only  create 
confusion.* 

The  years  1899  and  1908  are  the  earliest  and  latest  for 
which  full  information  as  to  immigrants  by  races  is 
!  available.  In  these  ten  years  the  country  admitted  over 
one  and  a  half  million  Slavs,  many  of  whom,  however; 
had  been  here  before  or  have  since  returned.  It  is  not 
uncommon  for  a  Slovak  to  have  made  the  trip  to  America 
eight  times,  in  which  case  he  appears  in  our  figures  as 
eight  immigrants. 

The  facts  for  the  period  are  shown  by  the  tables  in  Ap 
pendix  XVII,  where  we  see  that  69  in  100  of  Slavic 
and  peoples  arrivals  came,  as  already  said,  from  Austria- Hungary, 
25  per  cent  more  from  Russia,  2  per  cent  each  from 
Germany  and  the  territory  Bulgaria-Servia-Montenegro, 
i  per  cent  from  Turkey,  and  only  i  per  cent  from  alt 
other  countries  combined. 

The  immigration  from  Bulgaria,  Servia  and  Montene 
gro  is  almost  wholly  Slavic  (96  per  cent),  that  from 
Austria  nearly  two-thirds  such  (61  per  cent),  while  the 
streams  from  Russia  and  Turkey  are  not  far  from  one- 
third  Slavic,  and  that  from  Germany  is  one-tenth 
Slavic. 

Our  previous  study  of  conditions  in  Europe,  combined 
.  .!£  with  the  American  figures,  indicates  that  we  have  re 
ceived  during  the  decade  1899—1908  the  following  groups 
from  the  countries  named : 

I.  From  Austria-Hungary: 

Bohemians  (Chekhs)  from  Bohemia,  Moravia  and 

Silesia  (83,698). 
Poles  from  Galicia  (about  335,651). 


*  For  a  further  consideration  of  this  subject,  see  Boeckh: 
"The  Determination  of  Racial  Stock  among  American  Immi 
grants."  Quart.  Pub'ns.  Am.  Stat.  Assn.,  X,  pages  199-221 
(Dec.,  1906). 


THE   NEWER  SLAVIC   IMMIGRATION:    SINCE    l88o      249 

Slovaks  from  northern  Hungary  (about  320,047). 

Ruthenians  from  Galicia  and  northeastern  Hun 
gary  (about  102,036). 

Slovenians  from  the  Austrian  province  of  Carniola 
and  adjacent  parts  (number  unknown).* 

Croatians  from  Croatia-Slavonia,  I  stria,  Dalmatia, 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  and  southern  Hun 
gary  (number  unknown).* 

Servians  from  the  same   territory  (certainly  less 

than  28,677). 
II.   From  outside  Austria-Hungary: 

The  largest  of  the  three  Polish  contingents,  that 
from  Russia  (369,973). 

The  smallest  of  the  three  Polish  contingents,  that 
from  Germany  (32,388). 

Russians  proper,  from  Russia  (53,454),  only  be 
tween  three  and  four  per  cent  of  the  total 
of  almost  a  million  and  a  half  immigrants 
that  Russia  has  sent  us  in  the  decade. 

Servians  (beside  those  from  Austria- Hungary) 
from  Servia,  Montenegro,  Bulgaria  (?)  and 
Turkey  (?)  (number  unknown).*  Montene 
grins  are  Servians  from  Montenegro. 

And  lastly,  Bulgarians  from  Bulgaria  and  Turkey, 
which  latter,  I  suppose,  here  means  Mace 
donia  (number  unknown).  (See  page  274  if.) 

A  large  part  of  the  Slavic  immigrants  that  come  from 
outside  the  five  main  fields  ( (i)  Austria-Hungary,  (2) 
Russia,  (3)  Germany,  (4)  Bulgaria,  Servia,  and  Montene 
gro,  and  (5)  Turkey  in  Europe)  are  those  who  give  their 
last  permanent  residence  as  British  North  America  or  the 
United  States.  The  latter  rubric  was,  however,  provided 
only  in  the  1906  tables,  in  which  it  occupies  a  large  space, 
(1059  Poles,  for  instance,  gave  the  United  States  as  their 
last  country  of  permanent  residence). 

Turning  now  to  the  consideration  of  the  separate  na-  Racial 
tional  streams,  we  note  (cf.  Appendix  XVII)  the  great  grouPs 

*  Unfortunately  the  immigration  data  are  so  grouped  as  to    I 
make   it    impossible   to    distinguish    Croatians    and    Slovenians 
from  one  another,  or  Bulgarians  and  Servians  from  one  another, 
though  these  are  all  separate  nationalities  with  distinct  lan 
guages. 


250 


SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


"Alien  de 
partures" 
and  net  in 
flow 


numerical  predominance  of  the  Poles,  who  make  up  44 
per  cent  of  the  Slav  total  for  the  decade.  The  little  peo 
ple  of  the  Slovaks  make  the  second  group,  with  almost 
one-fifth  of  the  whole.  Third  comes  the  mixed  group  of 
Croatians  and  Slovenians,  which  the  data  do  not  allow 
us  to  separate,  and  which  together  make  over  16  per 
cent.  The  other  groups  are  all  much  smaller.  The  Bohe 
mians,  who  were  the  most  important  group  of  Slavic  im 
migrants  in  the  earlier  years,  and  even  in  1880  were  not 
far  from  twice  as  numerous  in  the  country  as  natives  of 
Poland,  sank  during  this  period  to  one-twentieth  of  the 
whole;  that  is,  to  less  than  the  little  group  of  the  Ruthe- 
nians  and  to  scarcely  more  than  those  newcomers,  the 
Servians  and  Bulgarians. 

Even  within  the  period  the  emphasis  has  been  shifting. 
Within  the  Slavic  group,  as  in  European  immigration  in 
general,  the  spread  of  the  movement  has  trended  south 
and  east.  Taking  1907,  the  year  of  the  high  tide  of 
immigration,  and  comparing  this  with  1899,  we  see  that 
the  different  groups  have  increased  at  very  different 
rates.  The  Bulgarian-Servian  group  rose  from  under 
100  to  27,000,  or  to  two  hundred  and  ninety-one  times 
as  many.  The  related  group  from  Dalmatia  and  Bosnia 
increased  twenty-fold;  the  Ruthenians,  starting  with 
1400,  rose  to  over  24,000,  multiplying  more  than  seven 
times;  the  Russians  increased  their  numbers  nearly 
ten  times.  The  older  immigration  groups  also  in 
creased,  though  at  a  less  rate;  Bohemians  and  Poles 
and  the  Croatian-Slovenian  group  all  about  five-fold, 
while  the  Slovaks  increased  less  than  three-fold,  and 
reached  their  maximum  in  1905. 

We  must,  however,  be  on  guard  in  using  any  immigra 
tion  totals  not  to  overlook  the  fact  that  they  represent 
gross,  not  net,  arrivals.  We  must  allow  for  the  numbers 
of  immigrants  returning  from  the  United  States.  In 
the  appendix  to  the  report  of  the  Commissioner  General 
of  Immigration  for  1908,  an  estimate  is  attempted  of 


THE  NEWER  SLAVIC  IMMIGRATION!    SINCE  l88o       2$I 

''Alien  departures,"  with  the  result  that  the  accepted 
immigration  figures  should  be  reduced  as  follows: 

1899  by  41  per  cent  1904  by  37  per  cent 

1900  by  31  1905  by  34 

1901  by  28  1906  by  26 

1902  by  21  1907  by  22 

1903  by  21  1908  by  73 

That  is,  while  the  total  immigration  for  1908  was 
782,870,  the  real,  net  immigration  was  only  209,867, 
or  not  far  above  a  quarter  as  much, — and  for  this  one 
year  the  figures  are  not  estimated  but  actual.*  What 
then  are  we  to  suppose  in  regard  to  the  Slavic  immigra 
tion?  What  proportion  of  their  total  of  nearly  1,700,000 
during  the  decade  1899-1908  represents  a  net  addition 
to  our  numbers?  We  get  a  side  light  on  this  by  study 
ing  Table  III  of  the  successive  immigration  reports 
which  gives  the  number  of  immigrants  of  each  national 
ity  who  have  been  in  the  country  previously.  In  Appen 
dix  XIX  are  given  percentages  for  two  years  (for  1906 
and,  for  purposes  of  comparison,  for  1900)  and  I  find  to 
my  own  surprise  that  the  English,  Irish  and  Scotch  have 
the  largest  proportion  and  thus  appear  to  come  and  go  the 
most,  and  that  the  Scandinavians  and  Germans  also 
stand  high.  The  Slovaks  have  nearly  as  high  a  rate  of 
those  returning  as  the  Irish,  in  both  years;  other  Slavs 
have  smaller  proportions.  Jews,  as  one  might  expect, 
come  to  stay,  and  go  back  and  forth  less  than  any 
other  class  noted. 

From  these  figures  we  see  that  while  the  Slavs,  except 
the  Slovaks,  are  (if  the  data  are  correct)  less  migratory 
than  the  average,  there  is  still  a  large  deduction  to 
be  made  for  those  entering  the  country  more  than  once, 
and  in  addition  to  this,  for  the  large  though  hitherto 
unknown  number  who  leave  and  do  not  return. 

*  For  the  first  time,  in  1909,  we  are  getting  actual  data  by 
nationalities  of  emigration  from  the  United  States.  At  this 
writing  they  are  available  for  July,  1908,  to  May,  1909. 
Those  for  the  Slavs  drawn  from  the  Immigration  Bulletin  for 
July,  1909,  are  given  in  Appendix  XVIII. 


252        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Another  indication  of  the  discrepancy  between  im 
migration  totals  and  net  additions  to  the  population  is 
given  by  a  comparison  of  the  figures  for  immigration 
with  the  United  States  census.  Foreign  countries  sent 
us,  in  the  decade  1891-1900,  3,687,564  immigrants.  The 
census  of  1900,  however,  shows  a  gain  of  foreign  born 
since  1890  of  less  than  a  third  as  many  (1,091,729). 
Part  of  this  difference,  but  not  by  any  means  all  of  it, 
is  accounted  for  by  deaths  among  our  foreign-born 
population. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  PRESENT  DISTRIBUTION  OF  SLAVS  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

As  regards  the  distribution  of  our  Slavic  population,  The  data  as 
it  is  not  possible  to  get  full  and  satisfactory  data.  We  ^istrib^Son 
should  like  to  know,  both  for  the  Slavic  body  as  a  whole 
and  for  each  of  the  nationalities  composing  it,  the 
total  numbers  of  the  group,  the  size  and  location  of  its 
chief  colonies,  the  states  in  which  it  has  any  considerable 
representation,  and  the  way  in  which  the  area  of  settle 
ment  has  extended.  It  would  also  be  interesting  to 
know  how  many  of  each  group  are  in  cities,  how  many  in 
smaller  industrial  centers  and  around  mines,  how  many 
in  rural  communities.  Unfortunately  much  of  this 
information  is  not  to  be  had. 

The  census  figures  by  country  of  parents'  birth  are   Difficulties 
given  herewith  in  Table  16,  but  they  supply  no  precise  JJensuslnd 
information   as   to    nationalities.     Where    the  political  immigra- 
boundaries    of    one    country   comprise    many    national  tlon 
groups,  as  in  Austria  and  Hungary,  and  where,  on  the 
other  hand,  racial  groups  are  cut  through  by  political 
boundaries,    as    are    the    Poles,    Little    Russians    and 
Croatians,  the  country  of  birth  tells  a  small  part  of  the 
story.    ' 

The  statistics  of  the  immigration  department  as  to 
intended  destinations  of  immigrants,  given  by  nationali 
ties,  for  1899  and  succeeding  years,  are  valuable  as 
some  indication  of  the  flow  of  the  current,  though  they 
doubtless  exaggerate  the  degree  of  concentration  of 
settlement. 

In  the  first  place,  the  states  in  which  the  ports  of  entry 
are  situated,  and  notably  New  York  state,  are  credited 
with  all  those  who  arrive  with  no  specific  address  though 

253 


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254 


DISTRIBUTION    OP    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  255 

perhaps  with  no  desire  or  likelihood  of  staying  in  the 
state,  as  well  as  with  all  those  who  stay  there  for  a  short 
time  only  and  are  later  distributed  thence  by  employ 
ment  agencies  and  otherwise. 

Secondly,  too  great  numbers  are  ascribed  to  the  states 
that  already  have  the  largest  colonies  and  are  best  known 
in  the  home  countries,  and  where,  consequently,  incoming 
immigrants  have  acquaintances  or  hope  to  get  work. 
Many,  for  instance,  strike  first  for  Pennsylvania,  and 
afterwards  go  from  there  to  West  Virginia,  Montana,  or 
elsewhere.  The  Slovak  colony  of  a  city  like  Pittsburgh 
is  equivalent  to  a  big  employment  and  information 
bureau,  and  by  no  means  all  of  those  who  resort  to  the 
city  remain  there.  For  example,  to  a  mining  camp  in 
Colorado  where  I  was,  came  a  Slovak  family  just  pro 
cured  from  Pittsburgh. 

Thirdly,  the  totals  are  exaggerated  by  counting  the  } 
same  man  over  every  time  that  he  goes  home  and  returns. 
How   serious  a  misconception   this  produces  has  been 
already  discussed  (page  250,  ff.). 

Bearing    these   reservations   in    mind,    however,    the  Destina 
accompanying  Map  X  and  Table  17,  summarizing  the  ^" 
data  as  to  the  intended  destinations  of  immigrants  for  decade 
the  ten  years  ending  June  30,  1908,  have  considerable 
interest. 

We   see   that  much   the   largest   total   contingent   of  j 
Slavs  was  headed  for  Pennsylvania,  over  twice  as  many  ! 
as  for  New  York  state,  over  three  times  as  many  as  for  .'    ( 
Illinois.     The  chief  groups  for  Pennsylvania  are  (a)  the 
Poles,  (b)  the  Slovaks,  (c)  the  Croatians  and  Slovenians, 
(d)  the  Ruthenians.     All  four  of  these  nationalities  are    ' 
represented  more  largely  in  Pennsylvania  than  in  any 
other  state.     The  others  are  comparatively  negligible, 
yet  the  largest  contingent  of  the  Bulgarians  and  Servians 
comes  here,  and  the  state  has  more  Russians  than  any 
other  except  New  York.     The  Bohemians,  however,  go 
elsewhere  in  larger  numbers;   namely,  to  Illinois,  which 
takes  first  place,  to  New  York,  which  stands  second,  ' 


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256 


257 


258        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Settlement 


Bohemian 
immigra 
tion  grown 
less 
important 


More  urban 
in  character 


and  third,  to  Ohio;  Pennsylvania  ranking  as  fourth 
choice  and  just  above  Texas.  The  Dalmatian  group  also 
made  Pennsylvania  its  fourth  choice,  after  New  York, 
Illinois  and  California  (the  latter  sought  by  about  2900).* 
If  in  addition  to  these  data  as  to  the  trend  of  the 
current,  we  wish  to  know  the  actual  numbers  and  loca 
tions  of  the  colonies  of  the  different  nationalities,  we 
have  to  rely  mainly  on  estimates  and  on  indirect  indica 
tions.  From  printed  and  manuscript  matter  in  various 
languages,  and  from  personal  inquiry,  I  have  gathered 
what  I  could,  with  the  following  results,  f 

BOHEMIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Of  late  the  relative  numerical  importance  of  Bohe 
mian  immigrants  has  decreased;  they  have  ceased  to 
stand  to  Americans  as  the  type  of  the  Slav.  In  1909 
they  were  only  about  four  in  a  hundred  of  the  Slavic 
arrivals,  and  in  the  period  1880  to  1900,  while  the  cen 
sus  showed  an  increase  of  nearly  eight-fold  for  natives 
of  Poland  (Jews  included),  of  nearly  seven-fold  for 
natives  of  Austria,  and  for  natives  of  Hungary  an 
increase  of  nearly  thirteen-fold,  the  number  of  natives 
of  Bohemia  did  not  double.  The  census  figures  are: 
natives  of  Bohemia,  in  1880,  85,361;  in  1900,  156,891. 

To  some  extent  the  character  of  the  Bohemian  immi 
gration  has  also  altered,  and  not  apparently  for  the 

*  Outside  of  the  thirty-seven  states  given  in  the  table,  no 
state  has  a  total  of  1000.  Arkansas,  Indian  Territory,  New 
Mexico  and  Oklahoma  taken  together  show  3426,  including  over 
700  Croatians  and  Slovenians  in  Arkansas  and  New  Mexico, 
and  over  300  Bohemians  in  Oklahoma.  Nevada  and  Idaho  to- 

§  ether  have  nearly  500,  mainly  in  Nevada,  and  most  of  them 
outh  Slavs.  South  Carolina  attracted  over  one  hundred  each 
of  Poles  and  Bohemians.  Mississippi  and  Kentucky  each  at 
tracted  over  100  Croatians  and  Slovenians.  A  few  South  Slavs 
(over  150  in  all)  have  sought  Georgia.  Florida  and  North 
Carolina  have  trivial  numbers  only  (100  and  55);  Hawaii  still 
fewer  (51),  including  35  Russians;  Porto  Rico  30;  the  Philip 
pines  none.  Alaska  on  the  other  hand  was  the  goal  of  342,  in 
cluding  78  Russians  and  243  South  Slavs,  of  whom  Monte 
negrins  probably  made  a  considerable  part.  (Compare  page  199.) 
t  For  numbers  of  the  various  Slav  groups  engaged  in  farming, 
see  Chapter  XV. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  259 

better.  For  one  thing,  it  seeks  the  cities  somewhat  more 
than  it  did.  In  1880  the  fifty  largest  cities  of  the  country 
held  somewhat  under  40  per  cent  of  the  natives  of 
Bohemia,  in  1900,  50  per  cent.  This  change  is  due  largely 
to  the  great  growth  of  the  colony,  or  rather  colonies,  in 
Chicago,  which  added  nearly  25,000  natives  of  Bohemia 
in  this  period.  Cleveland  gained  something  over  8000, 
New  York  not  quite  7000,  and  Baltimore  over  1000. 
St.  Louis  lost  in  relative  importance  as  a  Bohemian 
.centre,  having  attracted  practically  no  newcomers,  and 
the  other  Bohemian  city  colonies  did  not  receive  many. 
Omaha  (with  South  Omaha)  had  in  1900  a  colony  of 
3283;  I  have  no  figures  for  this  city  for  1880.* 

More  interesting  are  the  gains,  as  shown  by  the  census,  Gains  out 
for  the  districts  outside  of  these  few  large  city  colonies. 
Nebraska  added  over  7000  natives  of  Bohemia,  making 
it  the  third  Bohemian  state,  and  barely  less  than  New 
York  (16,347  and  16,138).  In  no  other  state  do  the 
Bohemians  make  so  large  a  proportion  (9  per  cent)  of 
the  foreign -born  population.  Oklahoma,  with  7  per 
cent,  comes  next,  and  Texas,  if  Moravians  were  not 
counted  as  Austrians,  might  show  nearly  the  same 
proportion.  Texas,  in  spite  of  being  such  an  old 
colony,  received  nearly  6000  (besides  Moravians),  Min 
nesota  received  3400,  the  Dakotas  together  2400, 
Oklahoma  nearly  1200.  These  are  the  chief  growing 
points,  and  they  certainly  suggest  a  wholesome  distri 
bution.  Pennsylvania,  such  a  lodestone  to  the  Slovaks, 
Croatians,  Poles  and  other  Slavs,  to  say  nothing  of 
Italians,  attracted  to  its  heavy  tasks  less  Bohemians  than 
went  to  the  prairies  of  the  Dakotas  alone. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  these  figures  give  a  some-  The  west- 
what  different  impression  from  the  table  of  destinations.!  ward 
This  is  doubtless  because  many  Bohemians  who  have  Wttlers 
been  in  the  country  for  some  time  move  farther  west,   / 

*  See  United  States  Census,  1900,  Population,  Part  I,  Table  35, 
for  statistics  of  foreign  born  in  cities. 
fSee  Table  17,  page  256. 


260        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Bohemians 
in  feeling 


Estimates 
of  "Bohe 
mian" 
group 


their  places  being  filled  by  newcomers  from  the  old 
country  whose  influx  they  neutralize  in  our  census  totals. 
Thus,  the  data  in  regard  to  destinations  by  no  means 
fully  reflect  the  push  westward.  Note  for  instance  that 
the  old  Bohemian  strongholds  of  Wisconsin  and  Iowa, 
though  still  to  a  considerable  extent  the  goal  for  im 
migrants,  made  only  slight  net  gains.* 

The  southern  states  gained  but  few  Bohemians,  or  else 
lost  some  of  the  few  that  they  had.  New  Jersey,  Mas 
sachusetts  and  Connecticut  gained  merely  some  hundreds 
each  (New  Jersey  the  most  with  63 1 ) .  If  we  add  Kansas, 
with  a  gain  of  571,  we  exhaust  the  list  of  any  important 
changes  of  distribution,  so  far  as  registered  by  the  census 
figures  for  natives  of  Bohemia. 

Of  more  interest  than  this  information  as  to  the  number 
of  those  born  in  Bohemia  is  information  as  to  those  who 
count  themselves  Bohemians,  and  who  constitute  the 
real  strength  of  the  group.  In  a  tenacious  race  like  the 
/  Slavic,  which  has  had  its  national  feeling  intensified  by 
the  fight  it  has  been  obliged  to  make  to  preserve  its  na 
tional  existence  and  above  all  its  own  tongue,  the  third  or 
even  the  fourth  generation  may  still  count  themselves  as 
belonging  to  their  ancestors'  stock,  and  be  none  the 
worse  Americans  either.  Have  the  English  sympathies 
of  a  descendant  of  a  Winthrop  or  a  Lee  disappeared  in 
half  a  score  of  generations? 

I  estimate  from  a  number  of  data  that  in  a  community 
perhaps  fifty  years  old,  the  census  figure  for  those  born 
in  Bohemia  must  be  multiplied  three  or  four  times  to 
give  the  number  of  those  who  count  as  "Bohemians." 
Fortunately,  however,  we  are  not  reduced  to  deduc 
tions  of  this  sort,  for  we  are  dealing  with  a  very  intelligent 
and  self  conscious  group  who  know  their  own  numbers 
pretty  well.  The  Reverend  Valentine  Kohlbeck,  writing 
in  1906  in  the  Champlain  Educator,  gives  a  series  of  esti- 

*  Bohemians  destined  to  Wisconsin  in  ten  years  ending  June 
30,  1908,  2959.  Increase  in  Bohemian-born  in  Wisconsin, 
1880-1900,  297.  The  corresponding  figures  for  Iowa  are  1589 
and  255. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA 


26l 


mates  which  are  not  likely  to  be  without  error,  but  which 
doubtless  indicate,  at  least  in  a  rough  way,  the  distri 
bution  of  the  group,  and  which  are  shown  in  Table  18 
along  with  the  census  figures  for  purposes  of  comparison. 
TABLE  18.— BOHEMIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


STATE 

REV.  MR.  KOHLBECK'S 
ESTIMATE  OF 
"  BOHEMIANS,"  1906* 

CENSUS  OF  1900.   PERSONS 
WITH  BOTH  PARENTS 
NATIVES  OF  BoHEMiAt 

Rank 

Number 

Rank 

Number 

Illinois 

I 

2 

3 
•       4 

6 

7 
8 
9 

10 

n 

12 
13 
M 
15 

16 

J7 
18 

I9 

% 
1  10,000 
57,000 
48,000 
45,000 
40,000 
38,000 
30,000^ 
30,000 
20,000 
18,000 
15,000 

12,000 
I2,OOO 
10,000 
8,OOO 

6,000 
5,000 

2,000 
2,000 
2,000 

1,500 
i,oooj 
1,000 
1,000 

800 
No  estimate 

2,000 

I 

2 

8 

7 
5 

4 

6 
10 

12 

9 

!3 

14 
15 

II 

*7 

16 
J9 
23 

21 

22 

18 
24 

21 

25 
20 
26 

77.329 
35,115 
20,253$ 

24,944 
29,135 

3I>°74 
31,416 
24,960 
6,802 
5,660 

7,222 
5,292 

4,443 
3,285 
5,923 

!,752 

2,467 
1,003 
566 

756 

606 

!,533 
478 

756 
43° 
852 
319 
1,029 

Nebraska  

Texas  
Iowa 

New  York  

Wisconsin  

Ohio  \ 

Minnesota  / 
Kansas 

South  Dakota  
Missouri 

Maryland  \ 

Michigan  / 
North  Dakota  
Pennsylvania  
New  Jersey  
Oklahoma  
Indiana  1 

Arkansas  j- 
California  J 
Colorado  
Massachusetts.  .  .  .  1 
Virginia  [• 
Washington  J 
Oregon  
Connecticut  
Montana  
Scattered  

Total  for  U.  S  

5r7>3°o 

325,400 

*  Kohlbeck,  Rev.  Valentine:  "The  Catholic  Bohemians  of 
the  United  States.''  The  Champlain  Educator,  XXV,  pages 
36-54.  (Jan-Mar.,  1906.) 

t  Census,  1900,  Population,  Part  I,  Table  38. 

j  Doubtless  too  low. 

§  Here  and  elsewhere  the  presence  of  Chekhs  from  Moravia, 
who  make  one  group  with  the  Bohemians  but  do  not  appear  in 
the  census  figures  for  natives  of  Bohemia,  help  to  cause  a  dis 
crepancy.  Cf.  page  217. 


262        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


POLES  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Father  f     Since   the    census    figures   for    ''Natives    of    Poland" 

Kruszka's     i  mciuc[e  Polish  Tews  and  others,  they  are  of  little  use  for 
figures 

I  our  purpose,  so  that  it  is  particularly  fortunate  that  we 

have  so  devoted  a  student  of  Polish  conditions  as  the 
Rev.  W.  X.  Kruszka  of  Ripon,  Wisconsin,  to  fall  back 
upon.  The  latest  estimate  of  his  that  I  have  seen  printed 
was  in  the  Polish  Press  (Prasa  Polska) ,  a  little  bi-lingual 
sheet  published  in  Milwaukee,  under  date  of  March  2, 
1907.  This  table  shows  <a  total  of  only  a  little  over 
2,000,000  (2,199,411),  but  Father  Kruszka  has  since 
written  me,  under  date  of  January,  1907,  that  he  then 
put  the  number  at  about  3,000,000. 

A  later  estimate  appeared,  unsigned,  in  the  Polish 
Press  of  December  15,  1908,  with  the  remark,  "Polish 
immigration,  especially  from  Russian  Poland,  has  been 
increasing  so  fast  during  the  last  eight  years  that  it  is 
hard  to  keep  track  of  it.  According  to  Polish  immigra 
tion  and  colonization  agents,  the  Polish  population  in 
the  United  States  numbers  4,000,006,  distributed  in  the 
following  states."*  Both  estimates  are  given  in  Table  19. 
These  figures  refer,  of  course,  to  all  those  who,  whether 
themselves  born  of  Polish  parents  or  not,  count  in  the 
community  as  Poles.  By  divisions  of  the  country 
Father  Kruszka's  table  shows  1,082,000  in  the  North 
Atlantic  states,  1,033,000  in  the  North  Central,  or  over 
96  per  cent  of  the  whole  in  the  North  and  North  Atlantic 
region. 

City  colo-  As  regards  the  urban  population,  it  is  impossible  to 

niesof  Poles  teU  what  proportion  of  the  Poles  are  city  dwellers,  but 

*  Mr.  Siemiradski  of  the  Polish  National  Alliance  writes  me, 
August  25,  1909:  "The  data  of  Father  Kruszka  were  about  as 
correct  as  possible  for  1907.  The  last  two  years  did  not  bring 
much  increase,  as  during  the  financial  panic  many  Poles  left 
for  the  old  country,  and  the  influx  of  new  immigrants  was  not 
considerable.  But  of  course  many  Polish  children  were  born  in 
this  time,  and  it  would  be  safer  to  put  the  whole  number  of  Poles 
in  the  United  States  as  over  3,000,000,  and  together  with  Canada 
about  4,000,000." 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN   AMERICA 


263 


TABLE    19.— POLES    IN   THE    UNITED    STATES.     ESTI 
MATES  OF  REV.  W.  X.  KRUSZKA  AND  OF  THE 
"POLISH  PRESS" 


ESTIMATE  OF  REV.  W.  X.  KRUSZKA 
Polish  Press,  MARCH  2,  1907 

ANONYMOUS  ESTIMATE  IN  Polish  Press, 
DECEMBER  15,  1908 

State 

Number 

State 

Number 

Pennsylvania  
Illinois  
New  York  
Wisconsin 

422,790 
388,745 
355,725 
*97,945 
160,830 
128,515 
96,110 

92,785 
88,805 
61,490 

4i,335 
21,400 

I9»4i5 
18,770 
18,740 
10,310 
8,630 
6,600 
6,270 

5,455 
5,320 
4,480 
4,100 

3,755 
3,36o 
3,340 
3,215 
2,780 
2,656 
2,610 

2,575 
2,065 

!,995 
1.795 

945 
865 
840 

8i5 
650 

375 

210 

Pennsylvania  

525,000 
500,000 
450,000 
300,000 
250,000 
250,000 

200,000 
140,000 
125,000 
I25,OOO 
7O,OOO 
6o,OOO 
5O,OOO 
5O,OOO 
40,000 

35,0°° 
25,000 
25,000 

20,000 
15,000 

8,000 
8,000 
7,000 
6,000 
6,000 
6,000 
6,000 
6,000 
5,000 
5,000 
5,000 
5,000 
Less  than 
5,000 

New  York 

Illinois  

Massachusetts 

Michigan.  .  . 

Wisconsin 

Massachusetts.  .  .  . 
Ohio 

Michigan  

New  Jersey 

New  Jersey 

Minnesota 

Minnesota 

Connecticut 

Connecticut 

Ohio 

Indiana  

Indiana  

Missouri  

Missouri  

Maryland 

Maryland 

Nebraska  
Texas  

Nebraska 

Rhode  Island  

Rhode  Island  
Delaware  
California  

Maine 

Texas 

West  Virginia  

North  Dakota.  .  .  . 
Kansas  

Delaware 

North  Dakota  

New  Hampshire.  . 
Washington  . 

Kansas 

California  

Colorado.  .    .  . 

Washington  

Iowa  . 

Colorado  

South  Dakota.  .  .  . 
Kentucky 

Iowa  

Oklahoma  

Maine 

Oregon 

Oklahoma 

Vermont  

Oregon  
Tennessee 

South  Dakota  

Kentucky  

Arkansas 

Montana  

Montana  

Tennessee  
Other  states  

Indian  Territory.  . 
Vermont  

Alabama  

Total  including  Can 
ada  

c.  4,000,000 

^uth  Carolina  .  .  . 
MRissippi  

•  .  . 

North  Carolina.  .  . 
Florida  .  . 

Total  2,199,411 

264  SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  Polish  city  colonies  certain  estimates  are  given  in 
Table  20,  below.  Father  Kruszka  also  in  the  first 
volume  of  his  "Historya  Polska  w  Ameryce"*  gives  a 
set  of  estimates  of  city  colonies  for  1903,  which  are  at 
tested  in  each  case  by  the  mayor  as,  to  the  best  of  his 
information,  the  number  of  inhabitants  "of  Polish 
nativity  and  origin."  These  are  as  follows:  Chicago, 
250,000;  Buffalo,  and  immediate  suburbs,  about  70,000; 
Milwaukee,  65,000;  Detroit  and  immediate  suburbs, 
50,000;  Pittsburgh  and  immediate  suburbs,  upwards  of 
50,000;  Cleveland  and  immediate  suburbs,  30,000; 
Toledo,  14,000. 

TABLE    20.— POLES    IN    CITIES.      ANONYMOUS    ESTI 
MATE  IN  "POLISH  PRESS,"  DECEMBER  15,   1908. 

Chicago   and  suburbs 350,000 

Greater  New  York 250,000 

Buffalo  and  suburbs 80,000 

Milwaukee  and  suburbs 75,000 

Detroit  and  suburbs 75,000 


Jersey  City,  Toledo,  Cleveland,  Bay 
City,  Manistee,  South  Bend,  St. 
Louis, Kansas  City,  St.  Paul,  Winona, 
Omaha  and  various  other  cities  .... 


Considerable, 
but  unknown 
number. 


Course  of  As  to  the  dates  of  settlement,  Father  Kruszka 's  figures 

for  the  founding  of  Polish  churches  give  some  informa 
tion,  f  In  the  decade  1880-1889,  the  North  Central 
district  continued  to  be  the  most  important.  Wisr 
consin  shows  twenty  churches  founded  during  this  time, 
Minnesota  seventeen,  Michigan  sixteen,  Nebraska  seven, 
Dakota  two.  Some  of  these  were  in  the  cities  (as 
Milwaukee,  St.  Paul,  Detroit,  and  Omaha),  some  in 
little  places  with  picturesque  Polish  names  (as  Pulaski, 
Sobieski,  Krakow,  Gniezno,  Opole,  Wilno,  Tarnow, 
Chojnice). 

About  the  middle  of  the  eighties  Pennsylvania  began 
to  gain  rapidly,  with  twenty-seven  churches  in  the 
decade  1884-1893.  Previous  to  this  there  had  been 
eight  Polish  churches  in  the  state,  beginning  at  Shamo- 
kin  in  1870  and  Shenandoah  1873.  Massachusetts  had 

*  Vol.  I,  page  90  ff.  t  See  above,  page  230. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  265 

a  Polish  church  in  Boston  in  1880,  in  Chicopee  in  1887, 
in  Fall  River  in  1890;  Connecticut  had  one  in  Meriden 
in  1891.  In  the  four  years  1888-1891  New  York  gained 
twelve  Polish  churches,  four  of  them  in  Buffalo.  All  of 
this  represents  the  growth  of  mining  and  factory  centres 
among  the  Poles,  in  contrast  to  the  homestead  settle 
ments  farther  west. 

In  the  next  period,  during  the  eleven  years  1890-1900, 
this  growth  in  industrial  districts  continued.  Pennsyl 
vania  added  twenty-eight  churches,  Illinois  twenty-six, 
including  the  fourteenth  Polish  church  in  Chicago. 
In  New  England,  Worcester  and  Holyoke  in  Massachu 
setts,  New  Britain,  Ansonia,  Bridgeport  and  Norwich  in 
Connecticut,  and  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  gained  Polish 
churches.  The  more  agricultural  districts  were  not, 
however,  at  a  standstill.  Wisconsin  added  twenty-one 
parishes,  and  Texas  took  a  fresh  start  and  added  eight. 
On  the  Pacific,  Tacoma  was  added  to  the  list  in  1890 
and  several  other  places  in  Washington  soon  after. 

The  immigration  reports  also  throw  some  light  on  the  Immigra 
distribution  of  Poles.  During  the  ten  years  endedj 
June  30,  1908,  Poles  to  the  number  of  743,151  entered^  tions 
the  country,  being,  as  already  shown,  44  per  cent  of  the 
total  Slavic  arrivals  for  the  period.  Of  these  Poles, 
nearly  210,000  sought  Pennsylvania,  and  nearly  160,000 
New  York  state,  together  almost  a  half  of  the  Polish 
immigration  of  the  decade.  Illinois,  Massachusetts  and 
New  Jersey,  Ohio,  Michigan  and  Wisconsin,  were  next  in 
order  of  popularity.  No  other  state  ran  to  six  figures, 
but  thirteen  states  were  the  goal  of  1000  Poles  or  more. 

SLOVAKS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

It  is  particularly  hard  to  estimate  the  numbers  of  this1!  Number  of 
nationality.     From    the    immigration    reports    we    can-  ^JcTto 
learn  how  many  have  come  in  since  1899  but  not  how  estimate 
many  came  earlier,  how  many  have  gone  away  nor  how 
many  have  been  born  or  have  died  here.     The  census 
lumps  them  indistinguishably  with  all  the  other  natives 


266        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Destina 
tions  of 
Slovaks 


of  Hungary.  But  though  the  word  Hungarian  is  often 
used  in  this  country  to  mean  Slovak,  and  though  the 
j  Slovaks  are  probably  the  largest  group  of  immigrants 
jwho  have  come  to  us  from  Hungary,  they  probably 
make  less  than  a  third  of  the  Hungarian  contingent — to 
judge  from  the  immigration  figures  of  1905,  the  only 
ones  which  give  the  data  for  Hungary  separate  from 
those  for  Austria.* 

The  fact  that  the  Slovaks  are  divided  religiously 
\makes  it  harder  to  get  trustworthy  estimates  for  them 
than  for  a  nationality  which,  like  the  Poles,  is  practically 
all  included  in  one  religious  body.  The  larger  number 
of  them  are  Roman  Catholics,  but  some  are  Lutherans, 
some  Calvinists,  and  some  members  of  the  Greek  Catholic 
church  in  which  they  are  hopelessly  confused  with  the 
Ruthenians.  (See  Table  28,  page  386.) 

Accordingly  estimates  of  their  numbers  in  this  country 
vary  widely.  One  informant  says  750,000,  another 
500,000.  Mr.  Capek,  in  his  very  interesting  book, 
"The  Slovaks  of  Hungary,"  published  in  1906,  to 
which  I  have  several  times  referred,  puts  them  at  "well- 
nigh  400,000."  The  immigration  figures  show  over 
300,000  landed  in  the  last  decade  alone,  but  this  doubt 
less  includes  many  double  counts,  as  the  Slovak  immi 
grant  is  prone  to  go  back  and  forth.  In  1905  nearly  a 
quarter  of  those  arriving  had  been  in  the  country  before. 

As  to  their  distribution  in  this  country,  the  data  for 
intended  destinations  of  immigrants  during  the  last  ten 
years  show  that  every  state  and  territory  f  (and  Alaska 
and  Porto  Rico  besides) ,  was  given  as  a  destination  by 


*  In  1905  Hungary  sent  us  163,703  immigrants,  of  whom 
51,000  were  Slovaks,  22,000  Croatians  and  Slovenians,  3000 
Ruthenians,  and  3000  other  Slavs  (Slavs  of  all  sorts  making  in 
that  year  48  per  cent  of  the  immigrants  from  Hungary) .  Of 
non-Slavic  nationalities  she  sent  Magyars  (or  Hungarians 
proper)  45,000,  Germans  26,000,  Hebrews  6000,  Roumanians 
7000.  These  proportions  doubtless  vary  from  time  to  time. 

|  When  the  "states  and  territories"  are  here  mentioned, 
Alaska,  Porto  Rico,  Hawaii  and  the  Philippines  are  not  intended 
to  be  included  unless  specially  named. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  267 

at  least  two  or  three  representatives  of  this  pathetic 
people,  so  dispersed,  yet  so  devoted  to  the  home  that 
poverty  and  oppression  combine  to  shut  to  them. 

Along  with  this  wide  dispersal,  however,  goes  a  very 
marked  concentration  of  their  forces  in  Pennsylvania, 
to  which  were  destined  over  half  (or  169,116).*  New 
York's  share  was  about  13  per  cent  (41,460),  New  Jer 
sey's  about  9  per  cent,  and  so  on  down  through  Ohio, 
Illinois,  Connecticut  and  Wisconsin,  to  West  Virginia 
with  something  over  i  per  cent.  A  thousand  or  two 
went  to  each  of  the  following  states:  Michigan,  Missouri, 
Massachusetts,  Indiana,  Minnesota  and  Maryland  (1300). 
Colorado  was  given  by  701  as  their  destination. 


RUTHENIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

This  is  another  group  for  which  it  is  as  yet  impossible  Ruthenian 
to  get  anything  like  satisfactory  data,  and  for  which  T 
estimates  vary  widely.  An  elaborate  study  of  Ruthe 
nian  conditions  in  America  was  undertaken  by  Mr. 
Baczynski,  of  Lemberg,  in  1906,  and  when  this  is  pub 
lished  (and  translated)  we  may  hope  to  know  more. 
In  1904  Mr.  Ardan  wrote  in  Charities,^  "Even  the  most 
conservative  cannot  today  place  the  number  of  Ruthe- 
nians  in  the  United  States  much  below  350,000.  In  ad 
dition  there  are  60,000  in  Canada  and  about  the  same 
number  in  Brazil  and  other  South  American  republics." 
Other  estimates  are,  "300,000  or  more,"  "250,000," 
and  finally,  "  200,000  besides  a  like  number  in  Canada." 

The  first  Ruthenian  church,  built  in  1885  in  Shenan-  Beginnings 
doah,  Pennsylvania,  as  already  stated,  roughly  locates 
the  Ruthenians'  starting  point  geographically  as  well 
as  chronologically.  Yet  if  the  greatest  number  went  at 
first,  and  still  go,  to  Pennsylvania,  they  also  early  found 
their  way  west.  For  instance,  in  Minneapolis  I  found 
that  they  dated  back  to  1884. 

*  But  note  the  warning  as  to  deductions  from  such  figures, 
page  253  if. 

t  Vol.  XIII,  page  246  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


268        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Destina 
tions 


Seeking 
farms 


For  distribution  I  have  again  to  depend  on  the  de 
clared  destinations  of  immigrants  during  the  last  decade. 
'Of  something  over  100,000  arrivals,  almost  52  per  cent 
(53,899)  gave  Pennsylvania  as  their  goal,  and  nearly 
20  per  cent  (or  21,376)  New  York,  but  this  probably 
exaggerates  the  numbers  settling  in  the  latter  state. 
New  Jersey  is  according  to  figures  the  third  favorite 
goal  of  the  Ruthenians,  with  over  11,000  intending  to  go 
there,  but  I  suspect  that  many  who  appear  as  destined  to 
New  York  really  go  to  New  Jersey.  It  is  significant  that 
while  it  was  not  until  1905  that  the  Ruthenians  founded 
a  Greek  Catholic  or  Uniate  church  in  New  York  City, 
Jersey  City  had  one  fifteen  years  earlier,  and  long  served 
the  religious  needs  of  the  Ruthenians  of  New  York  as 
well  as  of  those  of  Newark,  Hackensack,  Bloomfield, 
Elizabeth  and  Elizabethport. 

The  only  other  states  named  by  as  many  as  1000 
Ruthenians  were  Ohio,  Connecticut,  Massachusetts 
and  Illinois,  in  this  order,  but  only  four  of  the  states- 
and  territories  had  none  (namely,  Georgia,  Tennessee, 
Arizona  and  Nevada). 

I  Ruthenians  who  wish  for  farms  commonly  go  to  Canada, 
1  either  directly  from  the  old  country  or  after  saving 
money  here.  The  movement  from  the  United  States 
to  Canada,  or  more  specifically  to  Manitoba,  is  said  to 
have  begun  in  1896,  and  has  probably  drafted  off  some 
of  the  pick  of  the  Ruthenians  coming  to  this  country.* 
There  are,  however,  Ruthenian  farming  settlements  in 
the  United  States,  though  I  have  no  clue  to  their  num 
bers.  Instances  that  have  been  cited  to  me  are  Clayton 
and  Royalton,  in  Wisconsin,  and  some  places  in  North 
Dakota. 


*  For  an  anecdote  bearing  on  this  point  see  page  352.     See 
also  pages  139  and  338. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  269 


SLOVENIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  Slovenian   missionaries   and  other   early  comers  Only 
have  already  been  spoken  of,  but    how  much  connec- 
tion    there   was   between   these    and   the   mass    move 
ment  that  set  in  during   the    early   nineties   I   do  not 
know.* 

As  to  the  numbers  of  the  Slovenians  we  have  only 
estimates,  since  census  figures  merge  them  with  all 
others  of  Austrian  birth  or  parentage,  and  the  records 
of  the  immigration  authorities  treat  them  and  the  Croa- 
tians  as  one  group.  But  as  the  Slovenians  are  a  compact 
nationality,  homogeneous  in  religion  (practically  all  are 
Roman  Catholics),  and  apparently  with  no  special 
factions,  the  estimates  can  be  considered  fairly  trust 
worthy. 

The  figures  given  me  in  1907  by  Mr.  Valjavec,  editor 
of  the  Glas  Naroda  (combined  here  and  there  with  data 
from  other  sources),  are  as  follows. 

In  the  United  States  and  Alaska  there  are  a  little  over  Locations 
100,000  Slovenians.  Of  these,  only  a  few  thousand  are 
in  the  South,  most  being  in  the  North  Atlantic  and  North 
Central  region.  In  Pennsylvania  there  are  25,000  in 
twenty-three  or  more  places;!  in  Ohio  15,000,  largely 
in  and  about  Cleveland  (which  has  8000  or  9000  by 
itself);!  in  Illinois  over  10,000,  besides  big  colonies 
in  Joliet  (with  3000,  or,  according  to  a  local  estimate, 
9,000),  and  Chicago  and  South  Chicago  (with  2000)  ;§ 
in  Michigan  7000  (the  largest  group  being  3000  or  4000  in 

*  See,  however,  page  339. 

t  Of  these  Mr.  Valjavec  writes  that  they  are  "generally  coal 
miners,  laborers  in  steel  works,  business  men  (saloonkeepers,  of 
course  !  !  !),  proprietors  of  real  estate,  and  local  politicians  (espe 
cially  in  Forest  City,  where,  during  the  last  few  years,  Slovenic 
aldermen  were  elected)." 

J  This  colony  has  five  Slovenian  churches  in  and  about  the 
city,  and  is  made  up  mostly  of  factory  laborers,  with  "a  few  busi 
ness  men,  doing  business,  of  course,  with  their  countrymen 
only." 

§  Two  churches;  colony  made  up  of  "factory  laborers,  busi 
ness  men,  real  estate." 


270        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Few  in  the 
North 
Atlantic 
states 


Calumet  and  the  adjacent  copper  mining  settlements)  ;* 
in  Minnesota  12,000,  many  of  them  farmers,  in  twenty 
places ;t  in  Colorado  10,000  in  ten  places  or  more,  in 
cluding  Pueblo, J  Leadville,  and  smaller  mining  centres; 
in  Montana  5000  about  the  mines  and  smelters  of  Ana 
conda,  Butte,  East  Helena  and  so  on;  in  California  5000; 
in  Kansas  3000  (farmers  and  miners) ;  in  Washington 
15,000  (farmers);  and  1000  or  so  in  Utah,  Wyoming, 
Idaho  and  the  mines  of  West  Virginia.  Some  are  farming 
in  Indiana,  Nebraska  and  Iowa,  some  are  in  the  South 
west  and  South  (in  Texas,  Arkansas,  Tennessee,  Alabama, 
Louisiana  and  Mississippi),  often  as  stave  makers  and 
lumbermen — in  fact,  there  are  said  to  be  Slovenians  in 
almost  every  state  and  territory  except  Georgia. 

The  guidebook  for  Slovenians  in  America  by  the  Rev. 
F.  S.  Sustersic'  of  Joliet,  already  mentioned,  gives  not 
only  a  list  of  places  where  there  are  Slovenian  colonies, 
but  often  the  date  of  settlement  and  other  information 
of  much  interest. 

The  small  number  of  Slovenians  in  the  North  Atlantic 
division,  outside  of  Pennsylvania,  is  striking.  In  New 
York  city  and  Brooklyn  the  guidebook  just  referred  to 
finds  only  1000,  and  no  church;  and  in  all  New  York 
state  there  is  mention  of  only  one  other  colony — 150 
persons  in  Little  Falls.  New  Jersey  does  not  appear  in 
the  list  at  all.  § 


*  "In  Calumet  is  the  second  generation  of  Slovenians,  very 
prosperous  and  Americanized.  There  have  they  large  stores 
(Vertin  Brothers'  department  store,  one  square  block,  is  the 
largest  department  store  north  of  Chicago  in  the  United  States)." 

f  "The  first  Slovenians  coming  to  America  went  to  Minne 
sota  (homesteaders).  They  founded  a  town,  by  name  Krain- 
town,  about  forty  years  ago ;  there  lives  now  the  second  genera 
tion,  all  farmers,  very  prosperous  and  good  Americans."  Slove 
nians  in  Minnesota  are  largely  farmers  and  miners.  Bishop 
Trubec  of  Minnesota  is  a  Slovene. 

J  They  are  said  to  have  3000  business  men,  "real  estate,  etc.," 
in  and  about  Pueblo,  and  1000  "stockholders  of  mining  prop 
erty,  real  estate,  etc.,"  in  Leadville. 

§  See  above,  page  231  ff.,  for  accounts  of  earlier  Slovenian  im 
migration.  The  immigration  data  as  to  destinations  are  dis 
cussed  in  connection  with  the  Croatians  in  the  next  section. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  271 

CROATIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

I  here  take  the  term  Croatian  to  include  all  immigrants,   Estimates  of 
from  whatever  province,  speaking  the  Croatian  language.   r 
One  estimate  puts  them  at  400,000  in  the  United  States; 
another  at  from  250,000  to  300,000  divided  as  follows: 
from  Croatia  150,000,  from  Dalmatia  80,000  to  100,000, 
from  Istria  25,000,  from  Bosnia  20,000,  from  Herzegovina 
15,000  and  from  Servia  5000,  besides  of  late  some  from 
the  Banat  in  Hungary. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  Adriatic  shore  and  islands  Sources  and 
whom  we  roughly  designate  as  Dalmatians,  were,  (as  destmatlons 
already  stated,  early  comers,  and  the  colonies  of  natif  es 
of  Austria  in  New  Orleans  and  San  Francisco,  mentioned 
in  the  census  of  1850,  1860  or  1870,  were  doubtless  theirs.* 
Croatians  from  Croatia  came  later,  and  their  location 
has  been  determined,  not  like  the  Dalmatians',  |  by 
opportunities  for  waterside  industries  and  fishing,;  for 
business  and  for  farming,  but  by  opportunities  to  labor 
in  mines,  furnaces,  rolling  mills  and  factories.  Never 
theless,  they  are  said  to  be  in  every  state  and  territory, 
including  Alaska.  "  They  are  said  to  be,"  since  for  them 
as  for  the  Slovenians,  neither  census  nor  immigration 
reports  give  any  distinct  data,  so  that  estimates  alone 
are  available. 

The  largest  group  of  them,  however,  is  undoubtedly 
in  Pennsylvania,  where  they  are  put  at  from  80,000  to 
100,000,  or  according  to  one  estimate,  130,000.  A  large 
proportion  of  these  are  in  and  about  Pittsburgh  and  \ 
Allegheny.  Illinois  is  credited  with  40,000,  perhaps 
half  in  Chicago,  but  the  estimates  of  the  Chicago  colony 
vary  too  much  to  be  of  any  value.  Ohio,  including  the 
large  Cleveland  colony,  is  given  35,000.  Other  consider 
able  groups  are  in  New  York,  New  Orleans,  San  Francisco, 
St.  Louis  and  Kansas  City;  in  Montana  at  Great  Falls, 
Anaconda  and  Butte;  in  Colorado  at  Pueblo,  Cripple 

*  Natives  of  Austria:    New  Orleans,    1850,    129;     1870,   253; 
San  Francisco,  1870,  476. 


272        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Creek,  Crested  Butte  and  Denver;  and  in  Michigan  at 
Calumet.  The  oldest  colonies  are  said  to  be  those  in 
San  Francisco,  New  Orleans,  Mobile  and  Chicago. 
Occupations  One  informant  writes  that  not  many  are  engaged  in 
farming,  but  that  most  are  engaged  in  mining  different 
ores,  many  in  railroad  work,  steel  mills,  stockyards  and 
stone  quarries.  Workingmen  with  trades  are  chiefly 
from  the  larger  cities  of  Croatia  and  Istria;  stone-cutters 
especially  are  from  Istria.  "Dalmatians  are  mostly 
business  men,  especially  in  California,  New  York,  New 
Orleans,  Mobile,"  and  I  might  add  Galveston.  "The 
coast  has  many  Dalmatians  who  have  large  oyster 
plants."  "It  gives  me  pleasure  to  state  that  a  large 
percentage  are  now  starting  to  settle  in  the  United 
States  for  good;  many  have  recently  purchased  little 
homes  of  their  own,  many  are  prepared  to  receive  their 
families  from  abroad  to  settle  here." 

Destination  The  immigration  data  as  to  destinations  are  in  this 
immf5  af  case  not  distinctive,  Croatians  being  put  in  one  group 
tion  depart-  with  Slovenians;  but  even  so,  the  mixed  figures  have  a 
ment  certain  interest,  especially  since  for  the  Croatians  we 

have  so  little  American  material.  We  see  that  the 
combined  group  reached  a  total  of  275,800  for  the  last 
ten  years;  of  these,  121,311,  or  44  per  cent,  were 
headed  for  Pennsylvania.  The  next  largest  groups  were 
Illinois  (33,962),  Ohio  (28,822),  and  New  York  (22,045); 
then,  at  a  long  interval,  Minnesota,  Missouri,  Michigan, 
Wisconsin,  Colorado.  No  other  state  had  as  many  as 
5000,  but  every  state  and  territory,  even  Alaska,  Porto 
Rico  and  Hawaii,  was  the  goal  of  a  few  of  this  hardy 
group  of  wanderers. 


/x 


SERVIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Countries  of  Servians  come  not  only  from  Servia  and  Montenegro, 
where  they  compose  practically  the  whole-  population, 
but  from  many  neighboring  countries,  where  they  form 
a  scattered  minority  more  or  less  substantial,  or  where 
they  have  colonies.  The  chief  sources  are  Dalmatia, 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  273 

where  the  Greek  Orthodox  population,  which  is  the  same 
thing  as  saying  the  Servian  population,  makes  4  per 
cent  of  the  whole;  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  where  they 
are  over  40  per  cent;  Croatia,  where  they  are  a  quarter; 
and  the  Banat  and  elsewhere  in  Hungary,  where  they 
number  between  400,000  and  500,000,  or  5^  per  cent. 

The  United  States  census  does  not  include  Servia  or  No  separate 
Montenegro  in  the  list  of  countries  of  birth  with  which  it  official  data 
deals,  and  the  unfortunate  classification  of  the  immigra 
tion  reports,  which,  as  has  been  explained,  combines 
Servians  with  the  totally  distinct  nationality  of  the 
Bulgarians,  prevents  our  having  any  precise  data  as  to 
numbers  or  country  of  origin.  The  22,677  "Bulgarians, 
Servians  and  Montenegrins"  who  arrived  during  the 
last  decade  from  Austria-Hungary,  were  probably  mainly 
Servians  from  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  Croatia  and 
the  Dalmatian  coast  and  the  Banat  in  Hungary. 

Of  the  " Bulgarians,  Servians  and  Montenegrins" 
who  in  the  same  period  came  from  "Bulgaria,  Servia, 
and  Montenegro"  there  is  no  way  of  guessing  how  many 
were  Servians  from  Servia  and  Montenegro,  how  many 
were  Bulgarians  from  Bulgaria. 

Taken  together,  they  are  an  immigration  group  which 
rapidly  increased  in  importance  till  checked  by  the  late 
depression.  The  figures  for  the  last  eleven  years  were 
as  follows : 

TABLE    21.— BULGARIAN,    SERVIAN    AND    MONTENE 
GRIN    ALIEN  ARRIVALS,    1899-1909. 

1899 94  1904 4577 

1900 204  1905 5823 

1901 611  1906 11,548 

1902 1291  1907 27,174 

1903 6479  1908 18,246 

1909 6214 

Of  the  Servians  in  the  United  States,  the  Very  Rev-   Numbers 
erend  Sebastian  Dabovich,  Administrator  of  the  Holy  estimated 
Servian  Orthodox  Catholic  Church  in  North  America, 
estimates*  that  there  are  about  200,000,   "or   150,000^ 

.  -|      , |»,,Minr-  .nimni*"""" 

*  Under  date  of  April  8,  1907. 
1 8 


274        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

certainly."  He  places  them  as  follows:  New  England, 
50,000;  Southeastern  states,  5000;  North  Middle  states, 
20,000;  South  Middle  states,  15,000;  Northwestern 
states,  25,000;  Southwestern  states  and  territories, 
15,000;  Alaska,  Canada  and  British  Columbia,  5000; 
Mexico  and  Central  American  countries,  5000,  besides 
10,000  "more  or  less  unidentified  roaming,  unsettled 
(gipsies),  professionals,  etc."  A  Croatian  correspondent 
estimates  Servians  from  Servia  and  Montenegro  alone  as 
about  10,000  in  the  United  States.* 

BULGARIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

No  official          As  already  said,  Bulgarians  and  Servians  are  combined 
able1  avail"     in    the   immigration    tables,    and   the    census    does   not 
mention  Bulgaria,  so  that  for  Bulgarian  numbers  in  the 
United  States  we  have  to  rely  on  estimates. 

Mr.  Albert  Sonnichsen,  the  best  authority  on  the  sub 
ject  known  to  me,f  wrote  as  follows  in  the  summer  of 
1900: 

Estimates  of  "The  general  estimate  is  that  between  forty  and  fifty 
^"ifeUnited  tllousan(i  Bulgars  (from  Bulgaria  and  Macedonia)  have 
States  come  to  this  country,  including  those  in  Canada.  Their 

principal  centre  was  here  in  Granite  City,  an  outlying 
suburb  of  St.  Louis,  but  during  the  last  year  the  majority 
of  the  10,000  who  were  here  have  migrated  westward. 
At  present  there  are  less  than  a  thousand  here.  About 
10,000  are  now  working  on  the  railroad  lines  in  Montana, 
the  two  Dakotas,  Iowa  and  Minnesota.  The  belief  is 
they  will  return  here  in  autumn,  but  my  own  impression 
is,  there  will  never  again  be  10,000  of  them  in  Granite 
City. 

"  Other  important  centres  are  Seattle,  Butte,  Montana, 
Chicago,  Indianapolis,  and  Steelton,  Pennsylvania;  but 
they  are  too  shifting  a  people  to  make  estimates  of  their 
numbers  in  those  centres  of  any  value. 

*  For  discussion  of  immigration  data  as  to  destinations  see 
the  next  section,  on  Bulgarians. 

f  Author  of  "Confessions  of  a  Macedonian  Bandit,"  and 
agent  on  Bulgarians  for  the  Immigration  Commission. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  275 

"  I  hope  you  are  not  making  any  racial  distinctions  Bulgarians 

between  Bulgars  and  Macedonians.     I  believe  the  Bui-  ?re  Bljlgar- 

t  ians  wnencc- 

gars  who  have  come  from  Macedonia  are  registered  on  soever  they 

Ellis  Island  as  Macedonians,  which  is  bound  to  be  con-  come 
fusing  and  inaccurate,  for  Macedonians  may  includ^ 
Greeks,  Vlachs,  and  even  Turks.  The  distinction  be 
tween  the  Bulgars  from  Bulgaria  and  those  from  Mace 
donia  is  purely  political.  Many  of  those  who  are  regis 
tered  as  Greeks  are  so  in  church  affiliation  only,  being 
Slavic  by  race  and  tongue. 

''The  majority  (I  should  say  about  So  per  cent)  of  the 
Bulgars  in  this  country  are  from  Macedonia,  and  nearly 
all  are  from  one  small  district  in  Monastir  vilayet ;  -Kostur, 
or  Castoria.  Their,  reasons-f or Doming  aTeTundamentally 
economic,  but  the  immediate  causes  are  the  revolution! 
of  1904,  when  half  the  people  in  Monastir  were  rendered, 
homeless  by  the  burning  of  their  villages,  and  the  con 
tinued  persecution  of  the  Greek  Church  since  then,  which 
closed  Greece  to  them  as  a  market  for  their  labor.  Not 
five  per  cent  of  the  Bulgars  in  this  country  came  before 
four  years  ago. 

/'There  seems  to  be  a  conspiracy  among  students  of 
immigration  to  have  all  Bulgars  from  Bulgaria.  They 
remind  me  of  a  railroad  roadmaster  I  met  some  weeks 
ago.  I  asked  him  about  one  of  his  gangs,  about  eighty 
men,  and  he  told  me  they  were  mixed  Bulgars  and  Mace 
donians.  I  asked  him  how  he  knew  the  difference.  He 
said  he  had  a  keen  eye  for  race  characteristics.  He  had 
looked  the  gang  over,  and  one  by  one  picked  out  the 
Bulgars;  they  were  darker,  bigger,  stronger,  and  the 
foreman  had  declared  them  to  be  rightly  classified. 
When  I  visited  this  gang,  I  found  every  one  to  be  a 
Macedonian,  most  of  whom  I  had  met  in  the  old  country. 
"Within  the  last  month  I  have  visited  about  ten  large 
gangs  of  Bulgars  working  on  the  railroads.  In  some  I 
found  not  a  single  native  of  Bulgaria,  and  in  some  from 
two  to  seven,  the  gangs  averaging  fifty  men.  To  one 
who  knows  the  language,  there  is  no  mistake  in  dis- 


276        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

tinguishing.  There  is  as  much  difference  in  speech  and 
intonation  as  between  Missouri  and  County  Clare,  though 
the  Bulgarian  of  Bulgarian  schools  and  Macedonian 
schools  is  the  same.  ^ .  .  . 

"  I  have  been  quite  surprised  at  the  similarity  between 
the  speech  of  the  Bulgars  and  Croatians  (Horvats).  I 
found  I  could  converse  quite  freely  with  them,  and  that 
they  took  me  for  a  Horvat  coming  from  a  different  pro 
vince  from  their  own.  .  .  . 

"I   am   especially  interested  in   the   Slavs.     I   have 
great  faith  in  their  virility  as  a  race,  in  proportion  as 
they  are  unmixed  with  Turkish  or  Greek  blood." 
Bulgarian-  '       The  immigration  data  give  at  least  some  indication  of 
distribution    ^e  fl°w  of  the  Bulgarians  and  Servians,  considered  as 
one  group.*     Of  the  total  of  76,047  arrivals,  42  per  cent 
came  from  Bulgaria,   Servia,   and  Montenegro,    25   per 
cent  from  Turkey,  and  29  per  cent  from  Austria-Hungary. 
This  immigration  movement  is  still  in  so  early  a  phase 
that  it  is  doubtful,  as  Mr.  Sonnichsen  intimates,  if  the 
statement  of  destinations  has  much  bearing  on  any  per- 
v  manent  location.     We  see  however,  that,  as  with  most 
Slavs,  the  greatest-Jiiirribfir-^almost  a  quarter.)  _are  first 
„   ,.   «_    _-, t— -Illinois  and  Ohio  are"  next 


1  in  importance,  then  New  York,  Missouri  and  Indiana. 

v  But  in  scattering  numbers  they  have  sought  every  state 
and  territory,  including  Alaska  and  Hawaii;  Porto  Rico 
and  the  Philippines  alone  do  not  appear  on  the  list. 
Such  a  dissemination  of  the  peoples  of  the  earth  some 
times  fills  one  with  amazement.  How  did  no  Servians 
and  Bulgarians  happen  to  intend  to  go  to  Alaska,  or 
116  to  Oklahoma,  or  137  to  New  Mexico,  one  wonders. 

RUSSIANS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Census  fig-     \     The  census  figures  for  natives  of  Russia  are  valueless 


ures  useless  N 


as   an   indication    of   the   numbers   or   whereabouts   of 


for  Russians 

*  Russians  who,  as  we  have  seen,  make  a  very  small  per 

*  For  some  discussion  of  these  data  see  the  preceding  section 
on  the  Servians. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  277 

cent  of  the  immigrants  from  their  country,  the  greater   » 
part  being  Jews,  Poles,  Finns,  Lithuanians  and  Germans.  ' 

Russians  form  the  smallest  of  the  Slavic  groups  of  ilmmigra- 
immigrants,*    only    66,282    having   arrived   during   the  '\lon  data 
eleven  years  ended  June  30,  1909,  but  during  the  years   I 
1902—1908  inclusive  their  numbers  increased  with  marked 
rapidity.      The   figures   are   as   follows   for  the   eleven 
years : 

TABLE  22.— RUSSIANS;   ALIEN  ARRIVALS,  1899-1909. 

1899 1774  i9°4 3961 

1900 1200  I9°5 374^ 

1901 672  1906 5814 

1902 1551  1907 16,807 

1903 3608  1908 17,111 

1909 10,038 

It  is  noticeable  that  the  figures  did  not  decline  in  1908, 
when  immigration  generally  fell  off  on  account  of  the 
hard  times,  and  that  even  in  1909  they  declined  com 
paratively  little.  It  is  interesting  to  see  how  differently 
the  Russian  and  the  Servo-Bulgarian  flow  was  affected: 
in  1907,  the  former  was  16,807,  the  latter  27,174;  in 
1908,  the  numbers  were  17,111  and  18,246  respectively; 
in  1909,  10,038  and  6214,  so  that  where  the  Russians 
were,  in  1907,  the  less  by  over  11,000,  in  1909  they  were 
the  greater  by  almost  4000.  This  may  indicate  that  \ 
the  Russian  emigration  is  due  to  political  exigencies  ! 
rather  than  to  economic  considerations. 

As  regards  the  number  of  -Russians  in  the  country,  I  Numbers 
have  never  found  any  one  bold  enough  to  attempt  an 
estimate.  But  as  a  considerable  portion  of  the  immi 
grants  are  women,  and  children  under  fourteen  (indicat 
ing  a  family  element) ,  and  as  those  who  have  been  in  the 
United  States  before  are  a  small  fraction  of  those  enter 
ing  (indicating  a  small  proportion  of  the  bird  of  passage 

*  That  is,  of  groups  arranged  on  racial  lines;  the  classifica 
tion  of  the  immigration  report  isolates  one  portion  of  the  Servo- 
Croatians  on  a  geographical  basis  as  "Dalmatians,  Bosnians  and 
Herzegovinians,"  and  this  is  the  smallest  Slavic  group  of  the 
reports. 


278        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Destina 
tions 


Colonies 


element),*  it  seems  not  unreasonable  to  conclude  that 
births  in  Russian  families  in  this  country  must  have  at 
least  counterbalanced  both  deaths  and  the  outgo  of 
returning  emigrants  and  emigrants'  children. f  If  then 
we.  neglect  all  Russians  who  entered  the  country  before 
1899  (both  them  and  their  descendants),  we  should  still 
have  at  least  sixty  or  seventy  thousand  among  us,  the 
total  number  who  have  entered  the  country  since  1898 
being,  as  said  above,  ^jjjju-"* 

The  table  of  destinations  of  these  Russian  immigrants 
shows  New.._YjOf4cjas  the  goal  of  17,700,  and  Pennsyl 
vania  of  12,866.  Then  follow  Massachusetts  with  4061 ; 
Illinois  with  3719;  California  with  2850;  New  Jersey 
with  2717;  Maryland  writh  2326;  Connecticut  with 
1836;  and  North  Dakota  with  1172.  The  only  places 
under  our  flag  to  which  none  were  going  were  Utah  and 
the  Philippine  Islands.  Thirty-five  were  bound  for 
Hawaii  and  eleven  for  Porto  Rico. 

There  have  long  been  Russian  religious  colonists  in 
the  country.  The  census  of  i88oj  speaks  of  "35,722 
Russians  (predominantly  Mennonites)  of  whom  a  large 
majority  were  those  in  Kansas  (with  8032),  New  York 
(with  5438),  and  Dakota  (6493)."  Catherinenstadt,  in 
Kansas,  has,  I  am  told,  a  Russian  settlement,  and  there 
are  Russian  "  Stundists,"  in  this  case  Baptists,  who  have 
settled  within  six  years  or  so  at  various  points  in  North 
Dakota.  These  are,  however,  "Little  Russians"  like 
the  Ruthenians,  not  "Great  Russians"  or  Russians 
proper,  and  came  from  about  Kiew  or  Kherson.  The 
most  famous  instance  of  this  sort,  however,  is  the  body 

*  It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  Russians  with  the  Bul 
garian-Servian  group  in  these  respects.  During  the  last  three 
years  among  the  former,  women  made  13.2  per  cent  of  the  immi 
grants,  among  the  latter  3.6;  for  children  under  fourteen  the 
figures  stand  6.2  per  cent  and  1.5  per  cent  respectively,  and  for 
immigrants  previously  in  the  United  States,  2.3  per  cent  and  2.6 
per  cent.  The  Russian  movement  thus  appears  to  be  of  a  more 
permanent  sort  than  the  other. 

t  It  would  not  be  surprising  to  learn,  however,  that  consider 
able  numbers  leave  the  United  States  for  Canada. 

|  Vol.  I;  page  468. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  279 

of  Doukhobors*  who  were  settled  in  Canada  some  years 
ago,  to  the  number  of  7000  or  so,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Society  of  Friends. 

But  for  emigrants  who  are  leaving  home  not  for  America  or 
reasons  of  religion,  nor  politics,  but  for  economic  motives,,  ^ 
America  has  to  compete  with  the  vast  back  country  of} 
Siberia.  The  director  of  the  emigration  department  in 
St.  Petersburg  was  quoted  by  the  newspapers  under 
date  of  April  20,  1907,  as  saying,  "This  year,  owing  to 
the  political  and  economic  crisis,  300,000  Russian  sub 
jects  will  emigrate  to  America.  Hitherto  the  yearly 
exodus  has  been  about  250,000,  of  whom  two-thirds 
were  Jews  and  only  3  per  cent  orthodox  Russians,  i 
per  cent  being  farm  hands.  Now  the  percentage  of 
Russians  and  farm  hands  has  increased.  Most  of  the 
emigrants  will  go  west  to  Illinois,  Minnesota,  Nebraska 
and  the  Dakotas.  They  come  from  the  Volga,  Dnieper 
and  Don  districts,  and  are  hardy  and  industrious. 
Though  illiterate,  they  are  intelligent  and  unbigoted. 
The  Government  is  endeavoring  to  direct  the  stream 
of  emigrants  to  Siberia,  but  only  the  poorest  go  there, 
the  wealthier  preferring  America.  Steamship  lines  from 
Libau,  Odessa  and  Helsingfors  make  the  passage  across 
the  Atlantic  cheaper,  easier  and  surer  than  that  to 
Siberia,  while  clever  steamship  agents  canvass  the  villages 
and  hamlets,  securing  desirable  emigrants." 

Something  more  than  a  year  later,  the  following 
paragraph  appeared: 

"ST.  PETERSBURG,  Aug.  31,1908.  A  great  new  nation 
is  forming  in  Siberia.  One  of  the  greatest  migrations 
in  history  has  been  proceeding  so  quietly  that  the  world 
generally  has  not  noticed  the  movement.  During  the 
past  twelve  months  over  500,000  Russians  have  gone  to 
Siberia,  or  equal  to  half  the  number  of  immigrants  the 
United  States  received  during  that  period  from  the  whole 
world.  Prince  Vassiltchikoff,  minister  of  agriculture, 

*  See  Elkinton:  "The  Doukhobors,"  Charities,  XIII,  pages 
252-256  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


280        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

has  furnished  the  Duoma  with  the  following  figures  of 
the  migration  across  the  Ural  Mountains.  For  several 
years  before  1906  it  was  60,000  annually.  In  1906  it 
was  180,000.  In  1907  it  was  400,000.  In  the  first 
three  months  of  this  year  it  was  420,000,  comprising 
70,000  families.  The  accounts  of  Siberia  brought  home 
by  the  soldiers  returning  from  the  Russo-Japanese  war, 
impressed  the  poverty  stricken  Moujiks  with  glowing 
ideas  of  Siberia's  wealth.  They  also  have  little  faith 
in  the  measures  the  Grand  Council  of  the  Empire  is  taking 
to  settle  the  burning  agrarian  question.  The  emigrants 
seldom  go  singly,  or  even  in  families,  but  gather  in  col 
onies  for  the  exodus." 


Wide  dis 
tribution 


ESTIMATES  OF  TOTAL  SLAVIC  POPULATION 

Is  it  not  noteworthy  as  one  studies  these  figures  how 
widely  the  country  is  being  tried;  how,  with  all  the 
massing  of'  numbers  at  the  great  occupation  centres, 
there  are  scouts  as  it  were  of  almost  every  race  in  almost 
every  quarter?  Even  to  Porto  Rico,  Alaska,  and  Ha 
waii  Slavs  of  the  most  varied  nationalities  were  found 
to  be  making  their  way.  And  wherever  one  emigrant 
finds  an  opening  others  follow. 


TABLE   23.— ESTIMATES    OF   TOTAL    SLAVIC    POPULA 
TION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES— BY  NATIONALITY 


NATIONALITY 

LOWER  ESTIMATE 

UPPER  ESTIMATE 

Bohemians  
Slovaks  
Poles  
Ruthenians  

500,000 
400,000 
2,000,000 
200,000 

500,000 
750,000 
4,000,000 
3^0,000 

Slovenians  

100,000 

100,000 

Croatians,    including   Dal 
matians  

250,000 

400,000 

Servians  

150,000 

200,000 

Bulgarians  

40,000 

50,000 

Russians  

60,000  (  ?) 

7o,ooo(?) 

Total  

3,700,000 

6,420,000 

DISTRIBUTION    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA  281 

It  is  obvious  from  all  that  has  been  said,  that  there  is 
no  way  of  knowing  anything  like  the  precise  numbers, 
either  of  the  foreign  born  of  this  group  of  nationalities, 
or  of  those  who  count  as  belonging  to  them.  For  the 
latter,  those  who  count  as  Slavs  in  the  community,  I 
have  offered  such  estimates  as  I  have  been  able  to  get. 
These  doubtless  contain  much  guess-work,  some  exag 
geration,  and  perhaps,  in  cases  like  that  of  the  Croatians 
and  Servians,  some  overlapping.  Yet  they  unquestion 
ably  have  a  certain  value  especially  where  a  group  is 
homogeneous  as  regards  religious  faith. 

The  following  table  brings  together  these  estimates,  and 
it  seems  to  me  reasonable  to  conclude  that  we  probably 
have  not  much  less  than.  4,000,000  Slavs  in  this  country 
at  present,  and  very  possibly  well  over  that  number. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  ECONOMIC  SITUATION  OF  THE  SLAV  IN 
AMERICA 

Chief  occu-  The  Pennsylvania  coal  operator  imported  the  Slav 
laborer,  and  to  this  day  it  is  with  the  Pennsylvania 
products—coal  and  coke,  iron  and  steel 


mainly  busied.  He  does  not  take  to  the  various  lines  of 
petty  street  traffic,  such  as  peddling  of  small  wares 
and  fruit  selling,  which  so  often  make  the  first  in 
dustrial  step  of  the  Greek,  Syrian,  Italian  and  Jew. 
When  the  Slav  goes  into  trade  it  is  generally  a  round 
higher  up,  and  marks  on  his  part  a  great  rise  in  jhe  world. 
Neither  are  the  Slavs  characteristically  day  laborenTlike 
the  Italians.  Of  course  they  are  to  be  found  doing  rough, 
undifferentiated  work,  especially  on  railroads,  but  this 
is  not  typical.  Many  are  on  farms  also.  But  their 
most  characteristic  occupation  is  the  often  highly  paid 
employment  about  mines  and  foundries.  No  work  is 
too  onerous,  too  exhausting,  or  too  dangerous  for  them. 
Minor  call-  But  though  the  Slavic  group  is  absorbed  chiefly  in 
)  ,  these  four  occupations  —  mining,  metal  work,  common 
J  labpr_and  agriculture  —  it  also  includes  many  skilled 
y  mechanics  in  building  and  other  trades.  Bohemians 
I  \  especially  are  very  frequently  to  be  found  in  the  upper 
ranks  of  labor,  whether  in  small  independent  establish 
ments  of  their  own  or  as  skilled  workmen  in  large  fac 
tories;  they  are  found,  too,  in  large  numbers  in  the  more 
modest  ranks  of  the  business  and  professional  classes. 
Unfortunately  they  are  also  working  to  a  considerable 
extent  in  the  sweated  tailoring  shops  of  Chicago  and  cigaT-" 
making  shops  of  New  York.  Poles  and  other  Slavs  also 
work  in  large  numbers  in  factories  in  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut,  in  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Ohio,  Illinois 

282 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    283 

and  elsewhere.  They  are  employed,  for  instance,  in 
textile  factories,  sugar  refineries,  wire  factories,  oil  works, 
stockyards  and  packing  houses.*  Worthy  of  special  note 
is  a  pearl  button  factory,  imported,  work  people  and  all, 
I  am  told,  as  a  consequence  of  the  McKinley  tariff  which 
ruined  the  pearl  button  makers  of  Austria  at  a  blow, 
reducing  to  poverty  those  who  did  not  emigrate  to 
ieica)t 

_       i     i  __^__jidL__ 

Among  special  aptitudes  may  be  mentioned  that  of 
the  Croatians,  who  are  skilled^axemen,  for  work  in  lumber 
camps,  stave  cutting,  and  so  on.  Also  that  of  the  Dal 
matians  for  all  sorts  of  waterside  industries;  one  hears 
of  them  as  longshoremen,  fishermen  and  sailors,  and  as 
oystermen  about  New  Orleans.  They  seem  also  to  have 
a  special  gift  for  the  catering  business,  and  manage  res 
taurants  in  places  as  far  apart  as  Galveston  and  Boston. 

Each  local  and  racial  group  of  any  size  soon  comes  to  Professions 
support  its  own  saloons,  priests,  stores,  doctors,  lawyers, 
bankers  and  editors — evolving  them,  perhaps,  roughly 
in  this  order.  Thus  there  develops  within  the  group  a 
business  and  professional  class  from  which  most  of  the 
national  and  party  leaders  are  drawn.  But  the  number 
who  come  to  have  a  clientage  or  reputation  outside  their 
own  group  is,  naturally,  relatively  small,  though  very  in 
teresting.  Several  are  professors  in  universities,  of  whom 
Professor  Pupin,  of  Columbia,  is  probably  the  best  known. 

While  there  are  many  music  lovers  among  Slavs  in   Music  and 
America,  and  while  an  amazingly  large  proportion  of  the  art 
distinguished  names  on  our  concert  programs  are  Slavic, 
I  believe  that  these  are  almost  without  exception  of  Euro- 

*  The  charts  appended  to  this  chapter,  and  the  remarks  under 
the  different  national  heads  in  Chapter  XIII,  give  some  further 
information  as  to  occupations.  Mr.  Koukol's  remarks  as  to  the 
Slovaks  are  worth  quoting:  "The  Slovaks  when  they  come  here 
are  poor,  illiterate,  have  no  training,  are  inured  to  oppression; 
yet  they  have  pluck,  perseverance,  enterprise  and  courage. 
From  their  ranks  are  recruited  many  of  the  foremen  in  the  mills, 
and  an  ever-increasing  number  of  merchants."  Koukol:  "A 
Slav's  a  Man  for  a'  that."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI, 
page  594  (Jan.  2,  1909). 

f  For  the  Bohemian  end  of  this  story  see  pages  78-79. 


284        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Wage  rates 


In  Pitts 
burgh  mills 
and  mines 


pean  birth  and  training,  artists  of  whom  the  Polish  Pader- 
ewski,  the  Bohemian  Dvorak  and  the  Croatian  Ternina 
may  stand  as  types.*  Slavs,  like  Germans,  seem  not  to 
produce  in  our  country  their  finest  intellectual  and  artis 
tic  fruits.  This  is  doubtless  partly  our  fault,  partly 
theirs,  and  partly  simply  the  result  of  recent  transplanta 
tion.  A  Croatian  sculptor  in  Chicago  explained  to  me 
with  the  conscious  tolerance  of  a  cosmopolitan  that  in 
America  he  found  himself  obliged  to  do  merely  commer 
cial  work  on  buildings  and  so  forth.  Said  he :  "Of  course 
America  has  not  yet  reached  the  point  of  development 
where  she  can  care  for  sculpture.  It  will  come  in  due 
time.  Croatia  is  an  old  country  and  naturally  it  is  differ 
ent  there."  As  I  had  seen  something  of  the  vigorous 
and  beautiful  work  of  Franges  and  other  native  artists 
at  an  exhibition  in  Agram  (Agram  in  population  not  the 
equal  of  Peoria),  this  point  of  view  struck  me  as  less 
grotesque  than  it  might  have  done  otherwise. 

To  discuss  the  wages  of  Slavic  workers  would  be  sim 
ply  to  discuss  general  wages  in  all  the  lines  in  which 
they  are  employed.  For  apart  from  a  certain  discount 
if  he  cannot  speak  English  or  is  very  "green,"  the  Slavic 
immigrant  receives  the  usual  wages  of  the  place,  the 
industry  and  the  season. 

Nevertheless,  the  Pittsburgh  district  is  of  such  pre 
ponderant  importance  for  Slavic  immigrants  that  it  may 
be  worth  while  to  cite  some  of  the  prevailing  wage  rates 
there  as  given  by  Professor  Commons  in  his  study  for 
The  Pittsburgh  Survey,  f 

*  I  note,  however,  that  the  Rev.  Alois  Kolisek  in  an  essay  on 
"Slovak  Popular  Melodies"  (page  384)  says,  "The  American 
Slovaks  have  recently  produced  a  promising  young  composer, 
Vladimir  Sasko,  a  teacher  of  music  at  the  Music  School  in  Chi 
cago.  His  'Slovak  Rhapsodies'  are  worthy  of  note."  The 
essay  is  contained  in  Seton- Watson's  "Racial  Problems  in 
Hungary." 

t  "Wage  Earners  of  Pittsburgh."  Charities  and  the  Commons, 
XXI,  pages  1051-1066  (March  6,  1909). 

Though  printed  in  1909  the  article  appears  to  refer  to  condi 
tions  before  the  depression  of  1907. 

Further  figures  for  wages  of  Slavic  immigrants  based  on  data 


SLAVIC    WORKINGMEN,    PITTSBURGH 


Photographs  by  Hine 


ECONOMIC   SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    285 

The  two  great  classes  of  employment  that  interest  us  The  value  of 
are  work  in  and  about  the  steel  mills  and  in  and  about 
the  mines.  The  latter,  as  we  shall  see,  is  the  better  paid. 
The  unskilled  laborers  in  the  mills  and  yards  who  have 
little  or  no  knowledge  of  English  and  who,  as  the  case 
stands,  have  no  labor  union  to  help  them,  get  wages  vary 
ing  from  fifteen  cents  to  sixteen  and  a  half  cents  per 
hour.  They  earn,  that  is,  in  prosperous  times,  $1.35  to 
$1.65  for  a  ten-hour  day.  Section  hands  on  the  railroads, 
who  are  however  mostly  Italians,  get  less  than  this,  per 
haps  thirteen  and  a  half  cents  an  hour.  In  general  a 
knowledge  of  English  raises  the  pay  two  cents  an 
hour. 

"  Eight  to  ten  dollars  for  a  week  of  sixty  hours  is 
thus  the  level  toward  which  the  wages  of  the  unskilled 
gravitate  when  competition  is  free  and  English  unes 
sential." 

In  the  mines  of  the  Pittsburgh  district  the  common  Wages  of 
laborer  underground  gets  $2.36  for  an  eight-hour  day.   unskilled^ 
The  same  class   of  men  in  the  mills  would  be  getting  \ 
only  $1.80  to  $1.98  for  a  twelve-hour  day.     Other  men 
in  the  mines  paid  by  the  ton  but  practically  also  common 
laborers   earn  $2.40  to  $3.00  in  eight  hours,  while  cor 
responding  work  in  the  mills  brings  only  $2.28  to  $2.41 
for  twelve  hours. 

When  we  consider  more  skilled  work,  it  is  hard  to 
generalize.  We  find  men  in  the  mines  who  are  earning 
$3.25jto  $5.00  in  eight  hours,  who  for  somewhat  similar 
work  in  trie  mills  would  be  paid  an  average  of  $6.25  for 
twelve  hours.  There  are,  however,  in  the  mills  certain 
positions  requiring  peculiar  skill  which  command  ex 
ceptional  pay;  for  instance,  the  work  of  rollers  in  the 
rolling  mills  which  yields  from  $7.00  or  $8.00  up  to  $10  or 

from  New  York  employment  agencies  will  be  found  in  the  article 
by  Frank  ].  Sheridan,  "Italian,  Slavic  and  Hungarian  Immigrant 
Laborers  in  the  United  States,"  Bulletin  of  the  United  States 
Department  of  Labor,  No.  72,  pages  403-486  (September,  1907). 
A  table  of  wages  taken  from  this  article  will  be  found  in  Appen 
dix  XX,  page  464. 


286        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Effect  of 
immigra 
tion  on 
wages 


The  course 
of  wages 


Retrogres 
sions 


$i  6  for  a  twelve-hour  day.  The  men  who  hold  these  posi 
tions  are  immigrants  as  well  as  native  born,  but  they  are 
more  properly  to  be  ranked  as  a  sort  of  foreman  than  as 
workmen.  The  mines  offer  nothing  comparable  to  these 
most  highly  paid  jobs  in  the  steel  work. 

One  of  the  most  important  questions  in  regard  to  our 
immigration  is  the  question  how  this  vast  addition  to  our 
labor  supply  has  affected  the  price  of  labor. 

Since  the  pause  due  to  the  Civil  War  over  21,500,000 
have  entered  our  ports,*  the  majority  of  them  laborers. 
Vast  numbers  have  indeed  returned  (in  the  decade  1899- 
1908  alone,  3,275,589,!  more  than  one-seventh  of 
the  whole  number)  and  thousands  more  have  died  here. 
Yet  in  1900  there  were  at  work  nearly  9,000,000  white 
men  and  boys  of  foreign  parentage, — not  very  far  from 
half  (43  per  cent)  of  all  male  white  workers.  One  would 
suppose  that  America  could  not  have  absorbed  these 
myriads  without  bringing  wages  down  with  a  run. 

Notoriously  this  has  not  been  the  case.  Chart  III, 
drawn  from  the  carefully  computed  tables  in  Dr.  Edith 
Abbott's  study  of  the  wages  of  unskilled  labor  J  seems 
to  show  a  general  upward  trend  of  wages,  other  than 
those  of  farm  laborers,  from  1840  to  1890,  interrupted  by 
the  abnormal  rise  and  fall,  between  1860  and  1880, 
caused  by  the  Civil  War  and  the  depreciation  of  the 
currency.  From  1890  to  1900  this  gain  seems  not  to 
have  been  maintained.  Yet  I  suppose  that  few  would 
hold  that  the  workingman  in  America  has  on  the  whole 
lost  ground  economically. 

Granting  this,  there  has  been  loss  and  retrogression 
for  certain  classes  and  at  certain  points.  Some  trades, 

*  June  30,  i862-June  30,  1909;    21,663,203. 

t  Ann.  Report  Comm.Gen.  of  Immig.  for  1908,  page  228.  See 
also  pages  250-252,  294-296  and  appendix  XVIII,  page  463. 

J  "The  Wages  of  Unskilled  Labor  in  the  United  States,  1850- 
1900."  For  criticism  and  explanation  of  the  tables  the  student 
is  referred  to  the  original.  See  also,  for  tables  and  chart  showing 
relative  money  wages,  real  wages  and  hours  of  labor,  1840-1899, 
Bull,  of  the  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Labor,  No.  38  (Jan.,  1902),  page  123  ff. 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF    THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    287 


1895     1905 


1840        1850       1860       1870        1880       1890       1900 

CHART  III.— COURSE  OF  WAGES  OF  UNSKILLED 
LABOR 

FROM  DR.  EDITH  ABBOTT'S  "THE  WAGES  OF  UNSKILLED  LABOR 
IN  THE  UNITED  STATES,"  1850-1900 

Wages  of  unskilled  labor  (from  Table  X).     1 

Wages  of  miners  (from  Table  XII).      • 

Wages  of  agricultural  laborers  (from  Table  XIII).     -x-x-x- 
Wages  of  common  laborers,  1890-1900  (from  Table  XV). 


288        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

chiefly  those  subjected  to  sweating  (and  of  these  not 
ably  the  needle  trades),  have  suffered  from  the  influx 
from  Europe.  Furthermore,  specialization  of  industry 
and  exaggeration  of  the  seasonal  character  of  production 
have  tended  to  degrade  whole  classes  of  workers,  in 
cluding  the  tramp  labor  of  the  farm;  and  the  abundant 
supply  of  immigrant  labor  has  facilitated  both  specializa 
tion  and  seasonal  concentration. 

Wages  in  the  steel  industry  of  Pittsburgh  have  just 
been  considered.  But  if  we  look  a  little  further  back 
for  comparison  we  find  that  this  industry  seems  to  have 
offered  less  and  less  favorable  conditions  for  the  past 
fifteen  years  or  so.  Hours  have  increased  and  wages 
have  declined.  "It  is  estimated  by  many  who  are  in  a 
position  to  know,  that  the  actual  earnings  of  skilled 
workmen  in  the  steel  mills  have  declined  20  to  50  per 
cent  since  1897,"* — of  the  skilled  workmen,  we  must 
notice.  The  unskilled  laborers,  on  the  other  hand,  men 
paid  by  time,  not  by  the  ton,  "have  had  their  wages 
advanced  in  recent  years,  while  the  earnings  of  tonnage 
men  were  declining."  The  explanation  offered  by  Mr. 
Fitch,  in  his  admirable  Pittsburgh  Survey  study  of  the 
steel  industry  just  quoted,  is  that  the  company  cuts  the 
wages  of  those  men  on  whose  speed  the  output  depends, 
in  order  to  increase  their  exertions.  In  any  case,  the 
class  which  has  been  flooded  by  immigrant  labor  is  not 
the  class  which  has  lost  ground,  but  the  reverse  is  the 
case. 

I  think  we  may  conclude  that  the  earnings  of  the  rough, 
Emigration  manly  labor  of  the  country  have  not  in  general  been 
on  the  labor  pushed  backward  by  the  inrush  of  these  hosts  of  workers 
with  low  standards  of  wages  and  comfort.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  impossible  to  doubt  that  if  there  had  been 
no  such  influx  wages  would  have  risen  in  some  degree 
which  it  is  not  possible  to  calculate.  Had  our  legislation 

*  Fitch,  John  Andrews:  "The  Steel  Industry  and  the  Labor 
Problem."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  1079-1092 
(March  6,  1909). 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    289 

shielded  labor  by  anything  corresponding  to  the  protec 
tion  accorded  to  employers,  it  would  have  greatly 
retarded  and  curtailed,  both  for  evil  and  for  good,  the 
exploitation  of  our  resources  and  the  growth  of  our 
production.  Capitalists  would  have  been  bidding  against 
one  another  for  "hands"  just  as  their  wives  have  been 
actually  bidding  against  one  another  for  servants,  with 
results  upon  which  this  is  not  the  place  to  speculate. 

That  the  depressing  effect  of  the  immigrant  on  the  Reasons 
labor  market  has  been  chiefly  of  this  merely  negative 
character — clogging  the  rise  of,. wages  instead  of  causing 
a  sharp  decline — is  due.  to. -three  main  causes. 

First,  the  vast  expansion  of  industry  has  supplied  new 
work  for  the  new  workers  (or  for  old  workers  whose 
empty~ places  the  newcomers  have  then  filled),  thus 
minimizing  the  competition  of  immigrants  with  those 
already  in  the  country. 

Secondly,  labor  organizations  have  done  a  substantial 
service,  not  merely  to  their  own  members  nor  to  the 
working  class  in  general,  but  to  the  whole  country,  in 
standardizing  wage  rates  within  their  own  fields,  and  to 
some  considerable  extent  outside  them  also. 

Thirdly,  we  have  to  thank  the  particular  character  of  | 
the  immigrants  themselves,  especially  those  of  the  newer    ?v 
type^repf evented  by  Slavs  and  Italians,  fofthe  fact  that 
they  have  not  done  more  damage  to  our  wage  standards. 

The  first  point,  the  expansion  of  industry,  needs  little  (i)  Expan- 
elaboration.  The  total  value  of  our  manufacturing 
products  has  been  given  by  the  census  as  for  1870, 
four  billion  dollars;  1880,  five  billion;  1890  (the  close 
of  the  first  decade  of  the  new  immigration) ,  nine  billion ; 
1900,  thirteen  billion  dollars. 

As  a  single  illustration  of  the  relation  of  this  expansion 
to  Slavic  labor  I  may  take  the  great  Punxsutawny  coke 
district,  north  of  Pittsburgh.  Practically  all  the  labor 
about  the  coke  ovens  is  done  by  Slavs,  and  to  the  ques 
tion,  "Who  did  this  work  before  these  men  came?"  the 
answer  was,  "  It  was  not  done." 
19 


SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


(2)   Organi 
zation  of 
labor 


This  aspect  of  the  situation  was  especially  prominent 
in  the  flush  times  of  1906,  when  I  was  visiting  various 
Slavic  centres  in  this  country ;  at  that  time  the  effects  of 
the   general   expanding  trend   of   our   production  were 
intensified  by  the  special  effect  of  the  prosperity  of  the 
moment.     At  Galveston  I  found  employers  competing 
with  one  another  on  the  wharf  for  the  services  of  ar 
riving  immigrants;    in  Tercio,  Colorado,  a  few  months 
later,  mines  could  not  be  worked  to  the  full  for  lack  of 
men,  and  from  the  harvest  fields  of  the  Northwest  a 
great  cry  was  going  up  that  there  were  not  enough  la- 
.  borers  to  gather  the  crops.     When  the  demand  for  labor 
I  is  so  great  as  this  we  may  absorb  a  million  immigrants 
1  a  year  with  comparatively  little  injury  to  the  laborers 
I  who  are  here. 

As  to  the  second  point,  the  steadying  of  wage  standards 
through  organization;  though  the  Slavs  come  mainly 
from  districts  in  which  labor  and  capital  have  not  under 
gone  their  modern  development,  they  have  proved  sur 
prisingly  available  union  material,  as  was  shown  in  the 
great  strike  of  anthracite  miners  in  1902,  and  in  the 
strike  in  the  Chicago  slaughter  houses  in  1904. 

Even  when  the  Slav  does  not  join  the  union  he  often 
seems  to  have  an  instinctive  class  consciousness,  quite 
without  theoretical  basis,  which  keeps  him  from  being  a 
"strike  breaker."  A  Croatian  physician  said  to  me, 
"Our  people  are  not  in  the  union,  but  they  respect  its 
rules.  It  is  not  that  they  are  afraid  and  not  that  they 
sympathize,  but  a  class  feeling."  And  this  among  men 
as  innocent  of  socialism  as  a  Maine  farmer  could  be! 

In  spite  of  the  terrible  simplicity  which  at  home  too 
often  makes  the  Slavs  the  prey  of  usurers,  they  can  be 
made  to  understand  the  advantage  of  paying  out  their 
hardly  won  dollars  and  wasting  their  costly  American 
time  in  idleness  for  the  sake  of  future  benefit.  An 
observer  of  the  slaughter-house  strike  wrote : 

"Even  the  young  women,  the  pleasant-looking  Slav 
girls,  told  very  simply  and  very  distinctly  what  the  strike 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF    THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    2QI 

was  for — no  family  could  live  when  wages  were  fifteen 
or  sixteen  cents  an  hour  and  the  number  of  hours  of 
work  amounted   to  but  $5.50   to  $7.40  a  week.     The 
Slavs  live  on  very  little,  and  the  strike  meant  that  they  i 
were  becoming  Americanized  to  the  extent  of  attempting  [ 
to  raise  their  standard  of  living;    for  there  are  many 
people  who  are  living  on  a  margin  in  the  stockyards 
district  all  the  time.     When  the  girls  give  a  ball  they 
give  it  for  the  death  fund." 

The  Slav  is  apt  to  have  a  certain  mild,  immovable  Discipline 
stubbornness  which  is  a  valuable  quality  to  take  into 
an  industrial  struggle.  Moreover,  in  spite  of  his  indi 
vidualistic  temperament,  he  has  shown  in  the  unions 
capacity  for  cohesion  and  discipline.  To  quote  again 
from  the  account  of  the  slaughter-house  strike: 

"Another  strike  order  was  that  they  were  to  stay  at 
home,  to  stay  away  from  the  saloon  and  the  street  corner, 
and  not  to  'rush  the  can,'  and  though  the  Germans 
and  Irish  did  not  observe  this  literally,  you  could  see  the 
Slavs  actually  within  their  own  gates,  filling  the  front 
porches  and  spending  the  morning  sitting  on  the  high 

steps  obeying  the  order  implicitly The  police 

said  afterwards  there  were  fewer  arrests  this  last  summer 
in  the  stockyards  district  than  in  any  previous  sum 
mer At  the  outset  Michael  Donnelly  had 

cards  printed  in  four  languages,  in  which  it  was  ordered 
that  all  the  laws  must  be  obeyed;  that  any  violence 
would  not  be  tolerated.  It  was  no  uncommon  thing  to 
see  the  foreign  men  beneath  the  electric  lights,  puzzling 
out,  with  their  fingers  on  words  which  came  difficultly, 
the  meaning  of  the  order." 

This  adaptability  to  union  life  means  a  political  sense 
(in  the  best  meaning  of  the  word  political)  with  which 
the  Slav  has  not  commonly  been  credited.*  It  means 

*  Interesting  in  this  connection  is  the  McKees  Rocks  strike  of 
the  summer  of  1909  (on  which  see  various  articles  in  The  Survey, 
e.  g.,  Mr.  Paul  Kellogg's  article  in  the  issue  of  August  7,  1909, 
pages  656-665,  and  articles  by  Rufus  D.  Smith  and  M.  T.  C. 
Wing  in  the  issue  of  October  2,  1909). 


2Q2        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

among  other  things  that  men  inheriting  all  sorts  of  racial 
feuds  and  animosities,  which  have  been  systematically 
fostered  by  government  for  centuries,  can  and  do  sink 
those  hatreds  in  cosmopolitan  unions.  At  one  meeting, 
for  instance,  interpreters  will  address  their  people  in 
Slovak,  Polish,  Bohemian  and  Lithuanian.  Of  whatever 
/unwisdom,  and  worse,  unions  may  stand  accused,  they 
teach  at  least  a  nobler,  more  intelligible  and  more  practi 
cal  lesson  in  democratic  self-government  than  most  ward 
politics. 
Unor-  In  the  two  great  industries  of  the  Pittsburgh  district, 

ganized          mining   and   steel   work,    Professor   Commons   shows   a 

steel     work-  .    .  . 

ersvs.  organ-  most  striking  contrast  in  both  conditions  and  earnings 

ized  miners  between  the  steel  trade,  in  which  unionism  has  collapsed 
completely,  and  mining,  where  it  has  thriven  to  the 
advantage  of  both  employers  and  men.*  He  reckons 
that  while  "in  1897  the  conditions  in  the  mines  were 
similar  to  those  in  the  mills,"  since  that  date,  the  condi 
tions  of  the  poorest  paid  laborers  in  the  mines  have  im 
proved  100  per  cent  and  that  of  their  fellow  workers  in 
steel  perhaps  20  per  cent,  so  that  today,  "  measured  by  the 
hour,  to  the  Slavs  employed  by  the  same  company -re 
paid  90  per  cent  to  IQQ  per  cent  more  as  mine  workers 
than  as  steel  workers."  Not  only  are  the  miners' 
hours-less,  and  their  wages  per  hour  more,  but  the 
miners  have  better  housing  at  lower  rentals.  "Taking 
everything  into  account— wages,  hours,  leisure,  cost  of 

*  "With  a  national  union  able  and  willing  to  discipline  its 
local  unions,  the  leading  coal  operators  assert  that  they  can  carry 
on  their  business  to  better  advantage  with  the  union  than  with 
out.  If  there  were  no  union  they  would  be  menaced  by  petty 
strikes  whenever  a  few  hot-heads  stirred  up  trouble,  and  at  times 
when  the  operator  might  be  tied  up  with  contracts  to  deliver 
coal.  But  under  the  annual  agreements  with  the  union  the 
operators  are  safer  in  making  long  contracts,  and  they  can  con 
duct  their  business  on  even  a  closer  calculation  for  labor  than 
for  materials  whose  prices  and  supplies  fluctuate."  Commons, 
John  R. :  "The  Wage  Earners  of  Pittsburgh."  Charities  and  the 
Commons,  XXI,  pages  1051—1064  (Mar.  6,  1909). 

Further  references  on  the  subject  of  immigrants  and  trade 
unions  will  be  found  in  the  Bibliography  under  Labor  Organiza 
tion. 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    293 

living,  conditions  of  work — I  should  say  that  common 
laborers  employed  by  the  steel  companies  in  their  mines 
are  50  to  90  per  cent  better  off  than  the  same  grade  of 
laborers  employed  at  their  mills  and  furnaces;  that  semi 
skilled  laborers  employed  at  piece  rates  are  40  to  50 
per  cent  better  off  in  the  mines;  and  that  the  highest 
paid  laborers,  the  steel  roller  and  the  mine  worker,  are 
about  on  a  footing."  (Pages  1063,  1064.) 

The  trouble  in  the  steel  work,  then,  has  apparently  not 
been  the  presence  of  immigrant  labor.  In  both  cases  a 
large  part  of  the  workers  are  Slavs,  and  a  large  part  of 
the  Slavs  are  unskilled,  but  while  the  miners'  union  has 
been  dominated  by  the  interests  of  the  unskilled,  and 
has  prospered,  the  steel  workers'  disastrous  experience 
.was,  as  Professor  Commons  shows,  under  the  guidance 
of  the  highly  skilled  and  in  their  interests.  What  the 
absence  of  unionism  has  meant  in  the  steel  industry  not 
only  as  to  wages  but  as  to  morale  and  loss  of  personal 
and  political  liberty  is  strikingly  shown  in  Mr.  Fitch's 
study  of  the  Pittsburgh  steel  industry.* 

These  two  things,  the  expansion  of  production  and  the  £(3)  Charac- 

organization  of  labor,  have  nieanTlffiaTbotrr the  tempta-  ^er  °.f  Slayic 

immigrants 
tion  and  the  opportunity  for  the  immigrant  to  undercut 

wages  have  been  less  than  they  would  have  been  other-  ; 
wise.  The  Slav  especially  has  gone  largely  into  employ 
ments  in  which  wages  have  been  stiffened  by  both  ex 
pansion  and  unionism.  But  a  third  element  in  the  situa 
tion  has  been,  as  already  said,  the  character  of  the 
recent  immigrants  themselves. 

In  the  first  place,  they  have  come  here  to  get  money;  i  (a)  Their 
their   hearts  are   set  on   saving   money,  either  to  send  aim'.!1igh 
home  or  to  use  here,  and  their  main  object,  therefore,  is  * 
to  find  the  best  possible  wages.     Nothing  else  matters 
much,   and  to  this   end   each  nationality  forms  a  sort 
of  spontaneous  system  of  industrial  intelligence.     Con 
sequently   the   underbidding   of   the   Slavic   immigrant 

*  Fitch,  J.  A. :   "The  Steel  Industry  and  the  Labor  Problem." 
Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  1079-1092  (Mar.  6,  1909). 


294        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


(b)  Their 
mobility 


(c)   Return 
to  Europe 
an  alterna 
tive 


comes  less  in  the  shape  of  taking  smaller  pay,  which  he  is 
loath  to  do,  than  of  ''putting  up"  with  more  than  the 
English-speaking  workingman  will  tolerate — with  poorer 
accommodations,  harder  work,  longer  hours,  and  espe 
cially  with  greater  danger.  This  is  a  serious  matter, 
but  I  am  now  discussing  money  wages. 
,  Besides  being  thus  set  on  good  wages,  they  are  in  the 
/second  place  extraordinarily  unhampered  in  moving  to 
seek  them.  Adam  Smith's  dictum  that  men  are  of  all 
luggage  the  most  difficult  to  be  transported  does  not 
apply  to  them.  They  are  largely  single  men  unen 
cumbered  by  families,  and  many  of  those  who  are  married 
are  here  without  their  families,  supporting  them  "on 
the  other  side."  Both  are  entirely  mobile  through 
being  alone  and  without  any  sort  of  local  ties.  The  Slavs 
at  least  have  no  special  bias  toward  great  cities,  nor  any 
thing  more  potent  than  social  affinity  to  bind  them  to  the 
colonies  of  their  own  kind.  Whereas  Jews,  so  far  as  they 
are  not  deHebraized,  are  tied  down  by  their  need  of 
"kosher"  food  and  the  synagogue  to  places  which  sup 
port  a  considerable  Jewish  colony,  the  Roman  Catholic 
Slavs,  on  the  contrary,  find  their  church  practically  every 
where  and,  Catholic  and  non-Catholic  alike,  are  ready,. to. 
try  any  locality.  They  do,  not  "congest"  except  ...as 
conditions  of  employment  require  it. 

In  the  third  place,  the  little  farm  in  the  old  country* 
which  so  many  Slavic  and  Italian  immigrants  still  own, 
does  for  them,  to  a  certain  extent,  what  free  land  in  the 
West  did  through  so  many  generations  for  American 
workingmen  and  for  the  earlier  immigrants.  It  gives 
them,  namely,  an  alternative  to  wage  offers.  In  other 
words  the  employer  has  not  got  them  in  a  corner.  They 
came  here  for  high  pay,  the  highest  obtainable;  if  they 
f  do  not  get  what  they  want  in  one  place,  they  will  go  to 
another,  or,  if  it  seems  best,  they  will  go  home.  They 
thus  serve  as  a  sort  of  shifting  ballast.  Our  periods  of 
industrial  shrinkage  would  be  far  worse  than  they  are 
were  it  not  that  the  usual  supply  of  incoming  immigrants 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    295 

is  then  cut  down,  while  large  numbers  leave  the  country 
for  the  time  at  least.  Thus  within  two  months  of  the 
breaking  out  of  the  anthracite  coal  strike  of  1902  many 
Slav  miners  had  sailed  for  Europe,  and  in  the  lean  years 
1894  and  1895  besides  the  fact  that  immigration  greatly 
fell  off,  those  emigrating  were  nearly  three-quarters  of 
those  immigrating. 

Even  more  interesting  was  the  contraction  in  the  hard 
times  that  began  in  1907,  when  not  only  did  immigration 
fall  off  by  over  half  a  million,  or  to  less  than  two-thirds 
of  what  it  had  been  for  the  three  years  before,  but  the 
outgoing  tide  rose  from  some  400,000  to  over  700,000,  or 
to  over  77  per  cent  of  the  incoming.*  The  estimated 


TABLE  24.— ALIEN  ARRIVALS  AND  DEPARTURES, 
1904-1908. 

Year  Total  alien  arrivals     Total  alien  departures 

I9°4 840,714  332, OIQ1 

IQOS 1.059,755  385,  in1 

1906 1.166,353         356. 2571 

1907 1,438,469          43*. 3°61 

1908 924,695        714,828 

1  Estimated. 

Annual  Report  of  the  Commissioner  General  of  Immigration 
for  1908,  page  228. 

net  alien  inflow  fell  from  over  1,000,000  in  1907  to  about 
200,000  (or  to  little  more  than  one-fifth  as  many)  in  1908 ; 
and  of  four  nationalities,  Croatians,  Slovaks,  Italians 
and  Magyars,  more  went  than  came,  actually  lessening 
their  numbers  in  the  country  to  a  marked  degree.* 


TABLE  25.— IMMIGRATION  AND  EMIGRATION  OF  CER 
TAIN  RACES  DURING  THE  YEAR  ENDED  JUNE  30, 
1909. 


Nationality 
Croatian  and  Slovenian.  . 
Italian  (South) 

Immigrant 
Aliens  admitted 

.     20,472 
I  IO   ^4.7 

Immigrant 
Aliens  departed 

28,589 
147,828 

Net 
Loss 

8,117 

2  7  28  I 

Magyar  

.     _L    A  W,  ^  t+  1 

24.    378 

2O   276 

o  /  > 
4  808 

Slovak  
Immigration  Bulletin, 

*  'r'  O  1  u 
.       l6,l7O 

June,   1909. 

y  >    / 

23.573 

H-»  '-'y-' 

7.403 

*  For  further  facts  on  this  subject  see  above,  pages  250-252, 
and  Appendix  XVIII,  page  463. 


296        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


A  contrac 
tile  labor 
supply 


The  unem 
ployed  im 
migrant 


We  have  thus  an  elasticJabor  supply  on  a  large  scale, 
and  this  is  an  inestimable  advantage.  "The  bird  of 
passage  has  been  so  much,  and  often  so  stupidly,  in 
veighed  against  that  it  is  worth  while  to  emphasize  this 
point.  While  England  appoints  commissions  on  the 
unemployed,  starts  relief  funds  and  subsidizes  emigration 
of  her  own  flesh  and  blood,  our  Slovaks  or  Sicilians  return 
to  their  farms,  when  work  is  not  to  be  had  here,  and 
employ  themselves  at  home — vastly  to  their  own 
advantage  and  to  ours.  Conversely  when  new  works 
are  to  be  opened  up,  there  is  a  reservoir  of  indefinite 
capacity  to  draw  from. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  newcomers  do  find  themselves 
stranded  in  this  country  without  the  means  to  return, 
they  are  of  course  extraordinarily  helpless.  Take  Miss 
Grace  Abbott's  account  of  the  Bulgarians  in  Chicago 
in  the  spring  of  1908.*  Here  we  have  an  immigration 
movement  in  its  earliest  phase,  men  coming  through  the 
inducements  of  transportation  agents  and  without  rela 
tives  established  in  America  who  might  help  in  case  of 
need.  Unwittingly  they  came  at  a  bad  season  of  the 
year  and,  far  more  serious,  in  a  year  of  depression.  Had 
they  been  acting  on  the  advice  of  relatives  and  friends, 
this  would  not  have  happened.  The  men  studied  by 
Miss  Abbott  had  been,  on  the  average,  about  five  months 
in  this  country  when  on  April  8  the  Chicago  newspapers 
"told  the  story  of  600  unemployed  and  starving  Bul 
garians  who  had  marched  on  the  City  Hall  and  demanded 
work,"  a  "demonstration  as  harmless  as  it  was  ineffec 
tive."  Sixteen  had  had  no  work  at  all  in  this  country, 
and  only  sixteen  had  been  employed  for  as  much  as 
three  months.  They  had  been  swindled  by  agents  and 
contractors.  They  possessed  neither  money  nor  credit; 
most  of  them  (78  per  cent)  had  mortgaged  their  farms  in 
Bulgaria  to  get  here,  and  they  had  no  means  of  returning. 
"  News  began  to  come  from  home  that  the  mortgage  was 


*  "The  Bulgarians  of  Chicago."     Charities  and  the  Commons, 
XXI,  pages  653—660  (Jan.  9.  1909). 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF    THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    297 

due,  the  wife  sick  or  the  children  needing  food."     No 
wonder  that  they  were  in  despair. 

Even  worse  than  the  situation  in  large  cities  was  that 
of  unemployed  foreigners  in  some  of  the  many  places 
where  the  population  practically  consists  solely  of  the 
employes  of  one  or  more  great  industries.  When  these 
closed,  hordes  of  men  with  no  natural  affiliations  found 
themselves  out  of  work  in  a  community  which  had  no 
means  of  meeting  their  needs  whether  through  taxes  or 
philanthropy,  except  in  so  far  as  the  employer  assumed 
responsibility. 

Three  reasons  have  been  given  why  the  American  labor  Displace- 
market  has  not  suffered  more  than  it  has  done  b     the 


m- 
influx  of  immigrants.     Allowing  for  all  these  favorable  migrants 

circumstances,  it  is  still  true  that  the  presence  of  a  limit 
less  supply  of  unexaciEingp  "Unskilled  foreign  laborers, 
anxious  to  get  standing  room  in  American  employment 
on  any  terms,  is  an  infinitely  serious  fact  for  the  working- 
man  and  for  every  person  who  cares  for  America's  future. 
It  means  for  one  thing,  even  granting  all  that  has  here 
been  advanced,  that  Slavic  workmen  have  largely  dis 
placed  English-speaking  workmen,  with  higher  standards, 
in  whole  branches  and  districts.  A  notable  example  of 
this  displacement  is  in  the  Schuylkill  hard  coal  field.* 

The  peculiar  arrangement  in  coal  mining  by  which  the  Anthracite 
miner  is  himself  a  sub-employer  of  labor,  made  it  at  first  coal  mmmS 
appear  to  the  advantage  of  the  English-speaking  miner 
not  to  oppose  the  coming  of  the  "foreigners."    "As  Dr. 
Warne  says:   "  It  was  not  only  by  the  operators  and  rail 
road  mining  companies  that  the  Slav  was  at  first  wel 
comed.     Under  the  contract  system  in  vogue  in  many 
collieries,  the  skilled  miner  was  also  able  to  draw  advan 
tage  from  this  cheaper  labor.     This  self-interest  of  the 

*  For  full  accounts  compare  Dr.  Peter  Roberts'  two  admirable 
studies,  "The  Anthracite  Coal  Industry"  and  "Anthracite  Coal 
Communities"  and  Dr.  Warne'  s  briefer  but  important  account, 
in  "The  Slav  Invasion  and  the  Mine  Workers."  Further  data, 
from  an  article  by  Frank  J.  Sheridan,  will  be  found  in  Appendix 
XXI,  page  467. 


298        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

English-speaking  miner  removed  the  only  obstacle  then 
strong  enough  to  have  prevented  the  Slav's  entrance  into 
the  industry,  and  the  latter  then  rapidly  spread  through 
out  the  region,  especially  in  the  southern  field." 

.  The  result  of  this  to  the  laborer  employed  by  the 
miner  was  that  he  "was  forced  either  to  work  more 
cheaply  or  to  withdraw  from  the  competition;  and  in  a 
market  usually  over-supplied  with  mine  labor,  owing 
among  other  things  to  the  lack  of  regular  employment 
the  year  round,  there  could  be  but  one  result.  In  a 
short  while  the  English-speaking  laborer  was  being 
forced  out  of  that  position." 

But  the  pressure  exerted  by  the  new  element  was  not 
long  confined  to  the  laborers.  With  poetic  justice  the 
newcomers  whom  the  miners  had  been  glad  to  exploit, 
ousted  the  miners  themselves  as  well  as  their  laborers  in 
the  end.  To  quote  Dr.  Warne  again: 

"In  course  of  time  the  Slav  became  not  a  mere  pair 
of  hands  but  a  skilled  worker, — to  use  the  terms  common 
in  the  mines,  not  a  laborer,  but  a  miner.  As  he  had  been 
a  cheaper  laborer,  so  he  was  a  cheaper  miner." 

In  spite  of  having  moved  up  a  step  in  his  employment 
he  was  still  un-American  in  his  ways,  "had  his  fewer 
wants,  his  lower  cost  of  living,  and  his  lower  price  for 
his  labor.  Moreover,  he  brought  to  his  new  work  as  a 
skilled  miner  that  characteristic  indifference  to  difficult 
conditions  which  had  made  him  a  useful  laborer.  He 
would  work  in  poorer  seams  than  the  English-speaking 
miner,  and  in  more  dangerous  places,  and  so,  as  he  had 
driven  out  the  laborer  of  the  older  industrial  group,  he 
now  began  as  surely  to  drive  out  the  English-speaking 
miner. 

"Yet  the  pinch  of  the  new  conditions  for  the  English- 
speaking  miner  lay  not  so  much  in  a  reduction  of  the 
wage  rate  paid  him — for  that  remained  practically  un 
changed  from  1880  to  1900 — as  in  those  elements  which 
determined  his  net  earnings.  The  tendency  was  for  these 
to  decrease.  The  miners'  tools  grew  greater  in  number 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    299 

and  their  cost  rose;  the  poorer  seams,  which  must  now 
be  worked,  yielded  less  coal  for  a  given  amount  of  powder 
and  energy ;  certain  allowances  for  what  was  once  called 
extra  work  were  withdrawn;  insurance  became  at  once 
more  necessary  and  more  expensive  as  the  ignorant, 
daring  Slav  made  mine  working  more  hazardous;  the 
number  of  pounds  required  for  a  ton  and  the  size  of  the 
mine-car  gradually  increased;  the  dockage  system,  under 
which  the  miner  was  charged  for  impurities  in  the  coal 
he  sent  out  of  the  mine,  also  worked  more  and  more  to 
his  disadvantage." 

Down  to  the  strike  of  1900  "  it  was  in  general  true  that 
the  real  net  wages  of  those  of  the  older  industrial  group 
who  remained  miners  were  constantly  being  lessened. 
Not  only  did  many  voluntarily  leave  the  industry;  not 
only  were  workers  being  forced  out  of  the  mines,  but 
many  were  compelled  to  lower  their  standard  of  living; 
others  were  prevented  from  raising  their  standard, 
w^hile  to  many  the  struggle  to  exist  became  a  most  severe 
battle  for  the  necessaries  of  life.  The  pressure  on  some 
mine  workers  was  so  great  as  to  force  their  boys  of  ten 
der  years  into  the  breaker  and  their  girl  children  into 
the  silk  mill,  in  order  that  their  pittance  might  add  to 
the  family  income." 

Thus,  although  as  has  already  been  said  the  under 
bidding  of  the  Slav  has  been  felt  less  in  lower  wage  rates 
than  in  worse  conditions,  these  harder  terms  may  easily 
mean  lower  actual  earnings  even  with  an  unaltered  wage 
rate.  Even  if  earnings  are  not  decreased,  the  man  of 
American  standards  may  object  even  more  to  accepting 
poorer  social  conditions  for  himself  and  his  children  than 
to  adapting  himself  to  a  smaller  income. 

It  is  of  course  not  only  in  the  mining  world,  nor  only  The  reserve 
in  these  precise  ways,  that  the  pressure  of  immigrant  a 
competition  makes  itself  felt.     The  employer,  whether 
or  not  he  himself  directly  or  indirectly  evokes  the  ever- 
flowing  stream  of  fresh  labor,  is  not  slow  to  use  the  ad 
vantage  that  it  gives  him.     He  profits  unreservedly  by 


300        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

this  self -renewing  supply  for  which,  too  often,  neither 
he  nor  the  community  feel  any  responsibility.  The  old 
phrase,  "the  reserve  army,"  recurs  to  one  at  a  sight  like 
that  to  be  seen  at  the  doors  of  the  great  Chicago  packing 
houses  in  the  early  morning,  when  the  process  that  is 
usually  more  hidden  stands  nakedly  out.  Although  I 
was  there  in  a  season  when  the  labor  market  was  in 
general  understocked,  and  at  an  hour  when  most  of 
those  who  were  to  be  taken  on  for  the  day  had  been 
already  selected,  there  was  still  a  crowd  of  eager  men  and 
boys  waiting  in  the  yard  on  the  chance  that  more  hands 
would  be  needed  later.  Now  and  then  a  foreman  came 
out  and  ran  them  over  with  his  eye  and  picked  out  those 
that  he  wanted.  "He  looks  for  the  round-toed  shoes," 
some  one  said  to  me;  "he  wants  those  fresh  from  the 
old  country,  not  Americanized  enough  to  wear  factory- 
made  footwear.  When  they  are  squeezed  dry  he  can 
get  other  fresh  comers." 

Over-exer-  Here  we  touch  on  the  most  terrible  indictment  of 
dent  and'in-  American  employment — the  rate  at  which  it  uses  up 
jury  men.  I  have  already  told  how  in  Hungary  and  Croatia 

and  Carniola  and  Bohemia  it  was  constantly  said  that 
emigrants  returned  from  the  United  States  exhausted 
tif  not  maimed.     Men,  we  were  assured,  could  not  stand 
I  American  labor  more  than  a  few  years,  after  which  they 
I  came  home  with  their  earnings,  not  worth  much'f  or  hard 
[labor  thereafter.     This  fact,  that  he  does  not  expect  to 
have  a  long  earning  time  in  America,  makes  the  Slav 
miner  or  steel  worker  the  more  eager  to  earn  "big  pay 
day"  so  long  as  he  is  in  the  country,  and  also  more  in 
different  as  to  how  he  is  housed  and  what  his  working 
conditions  are  while  here. 

Thus,  the  American  workingman  has  to  meet  the  com 
petition  of  men  who  not  only  are  used  to  living  more 
^cheaply  than  he,  but  who  are  working  on  a  spurt,  spend 
ing  energy  which  has  not  been  tapped  before,  at  a  rate 
which  will  exhaust  their  strength  in  a  few  years'  over- 
exertion. 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    301 

I  have  spoken  before  of  the  Slav's  apparent  indiffer-  Indifference 
ence  to  danger,  and  I  certainly  do  not  pretend  to  explain  * 
it.  A  certain  degree  of  instinctive  fatalism  is  probably  one 
component ;  the  familiarity  that  breeds  a  most  dangerous 
contempt  is  another ;  another  may  be  physical  endurance. 
In  a  mining  company's  hospital  a  nurse  told  me  that  if 
an  injured  Italian  screamed  and  "  took  on,"  they  thought 
little  of  it,  but  if  a  Slav  complained  they  knew  that  he 
was  very  badly,  if  not  fatally,  hurt.  This  indifference 
to  danger  may  be  one  of  the  many  elements  that  go  to 
swell  the  terrible  and  excessive  death  roll  of  American 
industry,  notably  in  mines  and  in  metal  work. 

One  of  the  great  services  of  the  Pittsburgh  Survey  Accidents  in 
has  been  the  study  of  industrial  accidents.  The  black 
record  for  Allegheny  county,  in  which  Pittsburgh  is  situ 
ated,  shows  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1907,  526  men 
killed  and  probably  over  2000  injured  in  their  work;  this 
is  likely  to  mean  150  hopeless  cripples,  97  men  with  only 
one  hand  to  use,  75  with  only  one  eye,  470  children  left 
fatherless,  and  so  on.  Of  the  526  men  killed,  189  were 
born  in  Austria-Hungary;  of  these,  117  were  killed  in 
steel  manufacture,  15  in  railroading,  34  in  mining  and 
23  in  other  work.* 

Mr.  Koukol,  Secretary  of  the  Slavonic  Immigrant  So 
ciety,  states  that  the  report  for  1905-6  of  the  National 
Croatian  Society  shows  that  out  of  a  membership  of 
about  17,000,  95  were  killed  by  accident  (almost  a  third 
of  all  deaths)  and  85  were  permanently  disabled,  f 

A  study  of  the  causes  of  nearly  400  accidents  led  Miss  Causes  and 
Eastman  to  attribute  nearly  equal   numbers    of   cases 
(respectively  27.85  and  29.97  per  cent)  to  the  victims  or 
their  fellow  workers,  and  to  employers  or  their  repre- 

*  Eastman,  Crystal:  "One  Year's  Work  Accidents  and  their 
Cost."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  1143-1175 
(Mar.  6,  1909). 

See  also,  "The  Temper  of  the  Workers  under  Trial,"  by  the 
same  author.  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  561-570 
(Jan.  2,  1909). 

f  Koukol,  Alois  B.:  "The  Slav's  a  Man  for  a'  That."  Chari 
ties  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  589-599  (Jan.  2,  1909). 


302        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Relief 
funds 


Prevention 


sentatives.  Both  are  concerned  in  about  16  per  cent  and 
/in  about  27  per  cent  neither.*  The  compensation  was 
I  miserably  inadequate  measured  by  the  loss  of  earning 
power.  Six  men  whose  aggregate  loss  of  income  she 
estimates  at  $123,000,  received  together  $520.  This 
may  be  an  extreme  case,  but  in  over  half  of  the  cases  not 
a  dollar  to  take  the  place  of  lost  income  was  received  from 
the  employer;  i.  e.,  nothing  at  all  in  cases  of  injury, 
nothing  over  the  equivalent  of  funeral  expenses  in  fatal 
cases.  At  best  it  is  bad  enough,  but  the  foreigner  is  al 
most  sure  to  be  at  a  special  disadvantage.  In  Pennsyl 
vania  the  law  exempts  the  employer  from  paying  any 
thing  to  the  family  of  an  alien  on  his  death,  if  the  family 
lives  in  a  foreign  country, f  and  in  other  ways  it  is  more 
difficult  for  the  stranger  to  get  those  meagre  rights  of 
compensation  which  the  law  allows. 

The  Carnegie  Relief  Fund  and  the  various  relief 
associations  in  which  the  employers  interest  themselves 
to  some  degree,  mitigate  the  situation  somewhat,  and 
so  do  mutual  benefit  societies,  of  which  the  Slavs  have 
a  surprisingly  good  provision.  (See  page  380,  ff.)  Miss 
Eastman  states  that  the  National  Croatian  Society  pro 
vides  a  sick  or  accident  benefit  of  $5.00  a  week  for  nine 
months,  and  a  death  benefit  of  $800  for  a  payment  of 
fifty-six  cents  a  month. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  it  is  fair  to  the  employers  to 
suppose  that  there  would  be  less  waste  of  life,  health  and 
vigor  if  the  labor  supply  were  less  abundant,  if  the  men 
who  work  for  them  were  nearer  to  their  sympathies  in 
race,  religion  and  tradition,  or  if,  finally,  the  burden  of  the 
injured  and  the  worn-out  fell  more  surely  and  heavily 
on  the  taxpayers,  if  not  on  the  particular  employers.  J 

*  Eastman:  "One  Year's  Work  Accidents."     Table  VI,  page 

H57- 

t  Of  the  526  men  killed  in  Allegheny  county  in  a  year,  149 
left  dependents  in  Europe. 

J  Mrs.  Florence  Kelley,  speaking  out  of  her  own  experience 
as  factory  inspector  in  Illinois,  says  in  her  Pittsburgh  Survey 
article  on  "Factory  Inspection"  (Charities  and  the  Commons, 
XXI,  page  1113),  "In  the  United  States  and  particularly  in 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    303 

As  it  is,  some  corporations  do  feel  a  genuine  sense  of 
responsibility,  shown,  among  other  things,  by  the  main 
tenance  of  hospitals,  of  which  that  of  the  Colorado  Fuel 
and  Iron  Company  at  Pueblo,  under  Dr.  Corwin's  enthu 
siastic  care,  is  a  fine  example.  And  even  more  important, 
there  are  signs  that  we  are  on  the  eve  of  effective  policies 
for  conserving  human  life  as  well  as  other  national  re 
sources.  The  federal  experiments  looking  toward  les 
sening  the  loss  through  mine  explosions  is  one  such 
sign ;  another  is  the  recently  established  inspection  serv 
ice  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  and  perhaps 
the  most  important  is  the  gathering  demand  for  adequate 
compensation,  the  burden  of  which  shall  be  so  placed  as 
to  lead  to  the  utmost  practicable  measure  of  prevention. 

In  spite  of  the  grisly  deduction  that  must  be  made  for  Savings 
injuries,  if  we  cast  up  the  debit  and  credit  of  the  immi 
grant's  situation  from  his  point  of  view  we  find,  I  feel 
confident,  a  generally  favorable  balance.  He  comes, 
not  only  to  earn  his  living,  but  to  save,  and  he  usually 
succeeds  in  doing  so.  At  first  the  results  of  his 
thrift  are  remitted  to  Europe,  or  carried  home  on  his 


Pennsylvania,  there  is  greater  need  than  in  other  industrial 
communities  for  effective  factory  inspection,  because  the  courts 
have  deprived  employers  of  the  usual  business  incentives  to 
caution  and  effort  for  the  highest  efficiency  in  life-saving.  Under 
the  fellow-servant  laws,  even  as  amended,  and  the  assumption- 
of-risk  laws,  with  the  custom  of  carrying  casualty  insurance, 
employers  are  so  largely  absolved  from  paying  damages  that  an 
unparalleled  indifference  to  the  safety  of  employes  has  developed 
within  the  past  quarter  century.  The  waste  of  life,  limb,  health 
and  nervous  energy  of  workingmen  in  the  prime  of  life  is  so  con 
spicuous  in  factory  work  in  Pittsburgh  that  for  one  with  tech 
nical,  professional  acquaintance  with  the  processes  of  industry 
in  other  communities,  the  abiding  impression  following  visits  to 
Pittsburgh  is  one  of  horror  and  depression.  Relatively  little 
of  this  is  inevitable."  Note  also  Miss  Cro well's  comment  (in 
the  same  study,  page  909),  on  the  neglect  of  certain  Company 
tenements.  "  Its  mills,  with  their  equipment,  were  repaired  and 
improved  in  order  to  increase  the  quality  and  quantity  of  their 
output.  But  common  laborers  were  too  easily  replaced  for 
an  effort  to  be  made  to  conserve  their  health  or  well-being  by 
repairing  or  improving  these  houses  in  which  they  lived.  If  ten 
men  fell  out,  ten  more  were  ready  to  step  in  and  fill  their  places." 


304        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

return,  but  these  remittances  grow  less  with  the  years. 
When  they  first  came  they  used  to  send  home  80  per 
cent  of  their  wages  in  savings;  the  Italians  still  do  so,  but 
the  Slavs  now  send  less,  perhaps  20  per  cent," — so  said  a 
Dalmatian  banker  in  a  New  Jersey  city,  a  man  who  is 
the  trusted  adviser  of  a  whole  group  of  Slavic  nationali 
ties  and  of  those  Americans  who  are  trying  to  get  into 
touch  with  them.  Whether  these  precise  figures  are 
generally  true  or  not,  they  represent  a  widespread  effect 
of  two  causes — of  the  degree  to  which  families  and  family 
interests  have  been  permanently  transplanted  to  this 
country,  and  of  the  rising  standard  of  living. 

Savings  are  likely  at  the  beginning  to  take  the  shape  of 
hoarding,  and  the  first  purchase  of  the  newly  arrived  im 
migrant  is  apt  to  be  a  trunk,  so  that  he  may  have  some 
place  under  lock  and  key.  But  he  quickly  acquires 
enough  confidence  and  intelligence  to  prefer  a  bank.  Some 
times  it  is  an  employer  whose  timely  advice  brings  this 
about.  I  remember  a  Jersey  City  manufacturer  telling 
me  how  he  learned  that  one  of  his  men  was  keeping  $800 
in  his  room,  and  induced  him  to  deposit  it.  Sometimes 
representatives  of  a  man's  own  nationality  on  the  board 
of  directors  help  to  win  his  confidence,  though  in  one 
case  it  was  said  that  the  Lithuanians  objected  to  deposit 
ing  money  in  a  bank  where  their  priest  was  a  director,  for 
fear  that  he  would  know  how  much  money  they  had. 
Deposits  Whether  as  places  of  deposit  for  savings  or  as  channels 

and  remit-  of  remittance,  private  banks  are  generally  not  as  secure 
as  they  should  be,  and  the  shame  of  this  is  ours  so  far 
as  we  do  not  provide  proper  legal  safeguards.  The 
report  made  in  1909  by  the  New  York  Commission  on 
Immigration  shows  that  in  that  state  the  known  liabili 
ties  of  insolvent  banks  with  merely  nominal  assets 
amounted  in  one  year  to  nearly  $1,500,000.  Ten  states, 
including  Illinois,  Ohio  and  Wisconsin,  report  no  legisla 
tion  as  to  this  species  of  bank.  The  Commission  states 
that  "the  losses  among  Jews  and  Slavs,  though  very 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    305 

heavy,    could    not    be    determined    with    any    exact 
ness."* 

Besides  their  too  frequent  insecurity,  banks  where 
savings  may  be  deposited  are  in  many  places  not  within 
reach,  and  where  they  are  so  they  are  generally  less  avail 
able  than  they  might  be  because  of  the  custom,  only 
slowly  being  broken  in  upon,  which  keeps  them  closed 
evenings  and  Saturday  afternoons,  the  very  times  when 
they  are  most  needed. 

In  spite  of  all  obstacles  and  discouragements  to  thrift,  \ 
both  the  deposits  and  remittances  of  immigrants  reach  I 
imposing  figures. f  In  Hazelton,  the  centre  of  an  im 
portant  anthracite  district,  I  was  told  in  one  of  the  banks 
that  two-thirds  of  the  $5,000,000  of  deposits  in  the  three 
banks  of  the  town  were  those  of  the  "foreigners."  Few 
of  them,  I  was  told,  would  deposit  less  than  $20  a  month, 
many  as  much  as  $50 ;  a  man  depositing  the  larger  sum 
would  be  getting  perhaps  $75  a  month.  Incomes  are 
greatly  helped  out  by  boarders,  and  some  "boarding 
bosses"  save  $100  a  month. 

Another  very  important  and  early  developed  form  of  Mutual  ben- 
thrift  is  membership  in  one  of  the  many  National  Socie-  efit  societies 
ties   which,   along  with  their  various   other   functions, 
serve  as  mutual  benefit  societies.    Some  account  of  these 
is  given  in  Chapter  XVII. 

As  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  immigrant  swings  to^  Purchase  of 
this  country,  his  savings,  instead  of  being  laid  by  for  homes 
use  in  Europe,  are  accumulated  for  the  sake  of  some  sort 
of  investment  in  America.     Many  buy  farms  with  their 
savings,  but  many  more  buy  a  house  and  lot  for  a  home. 
In  some  mining  places  the  companies  own  all  available 

*  Report  of  the  Commission  on  Immigration  of  New  York 
State,  appointed  pursuant  to  the  provisions  of  chapter  210  of 
the  laws  of  1909,  transmitted  to  the  legislature  April  5,  1909; 
pages  xiv,  252.  See  especially  pages  24—38  and  190-194. 

f  In  Appendix  XXIII  will  be  found  a  discussion  of  this  subject, 
with  tables,  drawn  from  the  article  by  F.  J.  Sheridan  previously 
referred  to,  showing  the  number  and  amounts  of  money  orders 
sent  to  Italy,  Austria-Hungary,  and  Russia  for  each  calendar 
year,  1900—1906.  ^  ^ 


306       SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

land,  and  pursue  the  policy  of  refusing  to  sell  any,  but  in 
spite  of  this  difficulty  large  numbers  of  the  men  do  acquire 
homes.  For  instance,  in  the  mining  town  of  Shenandoah, 
Dr.  Roberts  estimates  that  "Slavs"  make  up  about  60 
per  cent  of  the  population,  and  own  as  individuals  25 
per  cent  of  the  real  estate,  besides  $120,000  worth  of 
property  in  churches,  parsonages,  parochial  schools  and 
so  forth,  the  whole  amounting  to  $1,320,000  acquired  in 
fifteen  or  twenty  years.  If  we  add  three  other  towns, 
the  total  rises  to  $2,500,000,  an  average  of  about  $100 
apiece.* 

Building        ,     Building  and  loan  associations  for  the  co-operative 
associations  jPurcnase  °^  homes  have  been  of  great  assistance.     Dr. 
!  Roberts    reports    sixty-five    such    associations    in    the 
j  anthracite    district.      These   are    made    up    mainly    of 
mine  employes,  and  in  1900  had  helped  to  put  up  583 
houses.     The  report  for  1904  of  J.  S.  McCullough,  the 
Illinois  auditor  of  building,  loan  and  homestead  associa 
tions,  contains  the  following  remarks  as  to  Bohemian 
and  Polish  societies  of  this  sort  in  that  state : 

"I  deem  it  appropriate  to  call  special  attention  to  the 
organizations  which  are  designated  in  this  office  as  the 
Bohemian  and  Polish -Associations  of  Chicago.  Their 
simple  and  economical  business  metEbds  (occasionally 
quite  crude),  their  steady  growth  and  general  success, 
the  fact  that  the  great  majority  operate  in  the  territory 
bounded  by  Twelfth  street  on  the  north  and  Halsted 
street  on  the  east,  embracing  the  great  stockyards 
district,  and  the  further  fact  that  the  membership  is 
composed  almost  exclusively  of  persons  of  Bohemian  and 
Polish  nationality  or  extraction,  renders  a  separate  class 
ification  justifiable.  Some  of  the  significant  features  of 
.  their  methods  are  that  books,  in  many  cases,  are  kept 

*  Roberts,  Peter:  "Anthracite  Coal  Communities,"  page  41. 
It  should  be  said  that  Dr.  Roberts  uses  Slav  in  this  connection 
to  include  Italians — a  sense  which  may  perhaps  be  justified  by 
local  usage  and  convenience,  in  spite  of  its  ethnological  inac 
curacy. 

For  some  data  as  to  Poles  in  a  Massachusetts  farming  village, 
see  below,  pages  328-9. 


CROATIAN  SALOON  IN  CHICAGO 


CROATIAN  SALOON  IN   HIBBING,  MINNESOTA 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN   AMERICA    307 

in  the  foreign  language,  all  payments  of  dues  and  interest 
are  weekly,  moneys  are  received  only  on  meeting  nights, 
no  regular  office  quarters  are  maintained,  officers'  sal 
aries  are  nominal,  economy  seems  to  be  the  watchword, 
and  among  the  members  a  fraternal  feeling  is  cultivated. 
This  particular  list  comprises  eighty-one  associations 
with  $6,200,000  in  assets,  220,000  shares  in  force,  and 
an  approximate  membership  of  28,000.  Of  the  above 
number  all  but  seven  show  an  increase  of  assets  during 
the  year — a  remarkable  exhibit.  The  industry,  thrift 
and  ambition  to  own  a  home,  prevalent  to  such  a  marked 
degree  among  these  classes,  is  responsible  for  the  standing 
and  splendid  record  of  these  institutions.  The  people, 
believing  and  trusting  in  them,  deposit  therein  their 
savings,  and  hundreds  of  homes  have  been  and  will 
continue  to  be  acquired  through  this  popular  agency."* 

Occasionally  savings  may  be  invested  in  shares  of  Business  in- 
stock;  for  instance,  in  the  town  of  Calumet,  Michigan, 
one  hears  of  workingmen  buying  copper  mining  shares. 
But  far  more  commonly  a  man  who  has  margin  enough 
for  saving,  accumulates  with  the  idea  of  going  into 
business  for  himself.  As  Dr.  Warne  says:f 

"At  first  the  Slav  was  found  only  in  the  'patch' — 
the  small  group  of  buildings  usually  located  near  a 
colliery.  But  today  he  is  filling  up  and  overflowing  the 
small  town,  and  is  appearing  in  the  principal  thorough 
fares  of  the  mining  cities  with  his  saloon  and  his  butcher 
shop.  He  is  even  reaching  higher  in  the  business  world. 
Only  recently  a  banking  house  has  been  opened  in  Shen- 
andoah,  conducted  exclusively  by  Slavs.  In  Mahanoy 
City  Slavs  are  also  largely  interested  in  one  of  the  banks, 
and  its  business  is.growing  rapidly." 

A  few  hundred  dollars  will  start  a  little  store,  perhaps 
dark  and  unattractive  to  American  eyes,  but  stocked  with 
an  assortment  of  simple  goods  such  as  the  countrymen 

*  Thirteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  Auditor  of  Public  Accounts 
of  Building,  Loan  and  Homestead  Associations  of  the  State  of 
Illinois,  pages  viii  and  ix. 

t  "The  Slav  Invasion,"  page  105. 


308        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


of  the  shopkeeper  desire,  including,  very  likely,  highly 
ornamented  prayer  books  in  Slovak  or  little  Russian, 
gay  printed  head  kerchiefs,  sheep's  milk  cheese  from 
Lipt6,  dried  wood-mushrooms  from  Bohemia,  the  little 
tin  lamps  that  the  miners  wear  in  their  cap  fronts  under 
ground,  and  whatever  may  happen  to  be  wanted  of 
cheap  American  drygoods  or  groceries.  With  this  may 
be  combined  the  sale  of  steamship  and  railroad  tickets 
and  perhaps  an  informal  employment  agency. 

It  seems  remarkable  that  the  Slavs,  who  have  been  so 
often  accused  of  lack  of  individual  initiative,  and  who 
many  of  them  are  commercially  very  primitive,  lacking 
in  all  business  experience  and  too  often  accustomed  to 
being  patiently  exploited  by  middlemen  in  countries 
where  Jews  practically  monopolize  all  business,  have  here 
succeeded  as  well  as  they  have  done  in  commercial  under 
takings.  Their  honesty,  and  a  strongly  marked  vein 
of  shrewdness,  are  probably  their  best  assets.  One 
constantly  hears  praise  of  Slavs  in-  business  dealings, 
especially  for  being  prompt  and  sure  in  payment.* 
In  Massachusetts,  in  Connecticut,  everywhere,  I  hear 
it  said  that  the  local  merchants  prefer  them  as  customers. 
(2)  Saloons  What  is  more  lucrative  and  far  more  desired  than 
keeping  a  store  is  keeping  a  saloon.  It  takes  more 
capital, — the  estimate  for  a  Polish  saloon  of  the  poorer 
sort  in  Chicago  is  $500  for  furnishings  and  an  equal 
amount  to  pay  for  the  license, — but  it  gives  much  more 
social  importance.  All  the  Slavic  groups  drink  a  great 
deal,  and  at  home  in  Europe  the  inn  or  dram  shop  or 
public-house,  or  whatever  one  chooses  to  name  it,  is  an 
important  institution.  The  Irish- American  develop 
ment  of  the  saloon,  with  all  the  threads  of  influence  that 
radiate  from  it,  is  an  alluring  model.  The  saloon  keeper 
of  a  Slavic  group  may  be  the  best  man  in  it;  he  is  at 
least  very  likely  to  be  the  most  influential.  It  is  very 
probably  he  who  acts  first  in  the  matter  of  building  a 


*  One  dealer,  however,  is  said  to  have  remarked,  "They  pay 
cash  because  they  could  not  get  credit." 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF   THE    SLAV    IN   AMERICA    309 

church,  and  perhaps  piety  and  business  combine  when 
he  secures  its  location  on  a  corner  opposite  to  his  place 
of  business. 

Still  higher  in  the  social  scale  than  the  saloon  keepers  (3)  Banks 
are  the  bankers,  whose  business  ranges  from  small  local 
concerns  in  mining  and  farming  towns  to  big  city  banking  r 
houses.  The  bankers  carry  on  the  bulk  of  the  business 
in  steamship  and  railroad  tickets  as  well  as  in  the  trans 
mission  of  money.  Many  of  them  are  well  known  and 
very  influential  men,  often  with  a  large  political  or  semi- 
political  following,  like  Mr.  Rovnianek  of  Pittsburgh 
among  the  Slovaks.  One  does  not  often  hear,  I  think, 
stories  of  defaulting  bankers,  such  as  are  so  pitifully 
frequent  among  Italians. 

Neither  do  the  Slavs  appear  to  have  been  afflicted   Absence  of 
with  any  serious  development  of  the  padrone  system,   p 
such    as    has    flourished    among    Italians,    Greeks    and 
Syrians, — a  fact  the  more  surprising  when  one  considers 
the  circumstances  and  the  way  in  which  many  groups  of 
Slavs  have  been  accustomed  to  have  all  their  business 
transacted  for  them  by  Jewish  middlemen. 

Very  interesting  developments,  significant,  one  may  Co-opera- 
hope,  though  not  yet  on  a  large  scale,  are  various  co-  tlon 
operative  undertakings  among  Slavic  groups;  for  in 
stance  in  Yonkers,  where  under  the  lead  of  a  public 
spirited  Ruthenian  priest  a  model  tenement  was  built 
on  a  co-operative  plan,  and  other  co-operative  enterprises 
were  started;  at  Calumet,  where  Croatians  have  started 
a  promising  co-operative  store  with  a  capital  of  $30,000 
and  about  one  hundred  members,  mostly  "trammers" 
in  the  mines,  besides  masons  and  other  outside  workmen; 
and  in  Lorain,  Ohio,  where  the  Slovaks  are  just  now  in 
corporating  a  co-operative  store  said  to  be  capitalized 
at  $10,000  and  to  propose  to  deal  in  groceries  and  pro 
visions,  dry  goods  and  hardware. 

The  total  amount  of  Slavic  capital  would  naturally  be 
impossible  to  compute,  but  it  must  be  enormous.  Father 
Kruszka  estimates  that  in  1900  Poles  owned  $600,000,000 


310        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

worth  of  city  property  alone.  As  early  as  1887  the 
Chicago  Tribune  calculated  that  Poles  in  that  one  city 
owned  real  estate  worth  $10,000,000. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  of  course,  that  every  family 
has  a  margin  from  which  even  Slavic  thrift  and  abnega 
tion  can  save,  or  even  that  they  all  have  an  income  suf 
ficient  to  maintain  strength  and  independence.  The 
Slavs,  like  other  working  people,  have  to  meet  the  prob 
lems  of  inadequate  pay,  rising  prices,  and  above  all,  of 
growing  needs.  As  the  Ruthenian  priest  already  spoken 
of  said  to  me,  "  The  laborer  cannot  afford  to  be  an  Ameri 
can.  It  costs  too  much.  A  man  must  earn  at  least 
$2.00  a  day  to  be  an  American."  Again  he  said,  "My 
people  are  perishing  for  lack  of  vision."  The  two  lacks — 
lack  of  vision  and  lack  of  what  is  materially  necessary  to 
satisfactory  human  living  under  modern  conditions — 
are  in  some  degree  two  aspects  of  the  same  thing,  and 
neither  is  confined  to  any  one  nationality. 


ECONOMIC    SITUATION    OF    THE    SLAV    IN    AMERICA    31! 


NOTES    ON    CHARTS    SHOWING    OCCUPATIONS    OF    SLAVIC    IMMI 
GRANTS    BY    NATIVITY    OF   PARENTS:     MALES    10   YEARS 
OLD   AND   OVER 

The  best  that  we  can  do  toward  getting  information 
from  the  census  as  to  the  Slavic  group  is  to  study  the 
statistics  for  those  born  of  natives  of  Austria,  Bohemia, 
Hungary,  Poland,  and  Russia.  In  the  following  notes 
and  charts  I  use  the  word  "Slavs"  to  designate  this 
group.  These  figures  unfortunately  include  not  only 
Slavs  but  vast  numbers  of  Jews,  besides  many  Germans, 
Magyars,  Lithuanians,  a  few  Tyrolese  Italians,  and 
other  non-Slavs. 

Where  we  are  dealing  with  hard  manual  labor,  which 
does  not  attract  the  Hebrew  element,  it  is  probably  fair 
to  assume  that  these  statistics  represent  a  group  sub 
stantially  Slavic,  with  some  intermixture  of  Germans, 
Magyars  and  Lithuanians.  This  would  not  be  true  of 
the  professions,  mercantile  pursuits,  nor  of  work  like 
tailoring  or  cigar  making.  Although  it  is  certain  that 
the  number  of  Slavs  in  these  occupations  is  large,  it  is 
impossible  to  isolate  and  count  them. 

It  is  also  impossible  to  get  from  the  census  any  data 
as  to  the  total  number  of  Slavs  in  this  country,  so  that 
no  estimate  can  be  made  of  what  proportion  of  all  Slavs 
(or  of  any  single  Slavic  nationality)  is  engaged  in  a 
given  occupation. 

The  figures  on  which  the  charts  are  based  are  drawn 
from  Table  23  in  the  volume  on  Occupations  (Census  of 
1900). 

Chart  IV  shows  the  number  of  Slavs  in  those  groups  of  Chart  IV 
occupations  in  which  they  are  most  numerous,  namely 
miners  and  metal  workers  (including  census  classes 
86,  95—100,  112—116);  laborers  not  specified  (census 
class  35);  in  agricultural  pursuits  (census  class  2,  which 
includes  not  only  farmers  and  farm  laborers  but  those 
in  lumbering,  dairying  and  stock  raising);  and  finally 
those  that  I  have  collected  in  one  group  as  "mechanics." 


312        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Chart  V 


This  last  group  is  intended  to  include  those  that  in 
Germany  would  be  called  Handwerker,  men  with  trades, 
and  includes  workers  in  the  building  trades,  leather 
trades,  cabinet  makers,  coopers,  bakers  and  butchers 
(census  classes,  71-8,  87,  88,  101-4,  108,  109).  Black 
smiths  and  machinists  are  not  included  here  but  with  the 
metal  workers. 

While  this  first  chart  shows  the  facts  for  the  Slavic  group 
as  a  whole,  it  is  interesting  to  see  how  much  the  various 


A. 

Miners  and 
Workers  in 

Metals. 

138,000 


B. 

Laborers  not 

specified. 

135,000 


C. 

Occupied  in 

Agriculture. 

105,000 


D.' 

Mechanics. 
57,000  t 


I 


CHART  IV.— COMPARISON  OF  FOUR  CHIEF  OCCUPA 
TIONS:  SONS  OF  NATIVES  OF  AUSTRIA,  BOHEMIA, 
HUNGARY,  POLAND  AND  RUSSIA  TOGETHER 


Slavic  nationalities  differ  among  themselves  as  shown  in 
Chart  V.  Taking  the  laborers  as  100,  we  see  that  the 
Bohemians  have  in  agriculture  (laborers  and  farmers 
together)  296,  or  nearly  three  times  as  many,  that 
mechanics  are  more  than  three-quarters  as  many  as 
laborers,  and  that  miners  are  few.  At  the  other  end 
of  the  scale,  Hungary  has  more  miners  by  a  third 
than  she  has  laborers,  while  agriculture  and  the  work 
of  mechanics  take  relatively  very  few.  It  is  interesting 


Sons  of 
natives  of 

Bohemia 


Russia 


Austria 


Poland 


Hungary 


LABORERS 

NOT 
SPECIFIED 


12,658 


I 


14,653 


I 


100 


29,888 


100 
57,317 


100 


100 


MINERS  AND 

QUARRYMEN 


1821 


7,782 


53 


29,563 


I  I 


99 


15,316 


27 


26,944 


20,029 


135 


FARMERS, 

AGRICULTURAL         PLANTERS  AND 
LABORERS  OVERSEERS  MECHANICS 


13,656 


I 


106 


9,544 


65 


6,155 


21 


12,524 


22 


1,494 


23,053 


190 


91 


9,090 


SO 


11,872 


21 


1,502 


10,346 


82 
16,335 


I  I 


111 


10,547 


35 


15,778 


27 


4,357 


22 


CHART  V.— CHIEF    OCCUPATIONS:     COMPARISON    OF   THE    DIF 
FERENT  NATIONAL  GROUPS 

For  each  national  group  the  number  of  laborers  is  taken  as  100  and  the 
other  occupations  are  represented  by  columns  adjusted  to  this. 

The  numbers  above  the  columns  are  the  actual  numbers  recorded  for  the 
specified  groups,  the  numbers  below  the  columns  are  percentages  in  terms  of 
the  number  of  laborers. 


3*3 


314        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

to  note  the  excess  of  farmers  over  farm  laborers  among 
those  of  Bohemian  and  Russian  extraction. 

Chart  VI  Chart  VI  shows  the  proportion  of  Slavs  engaged  in 

certain  occupations  to  the  total  number  of  persons  so 
engaged.  Here  the  actual  size  of  the  totals  in  the  dif 
ferent  occupational  groups  modifies  the  showing.  Thus 
the  agricultural  group  among  the  Slavs,  though  large 
absolutely,  proves  to  contribute  only  eleven  in  a  thousand 
to  the  enormous  aggregate  of  nearly  9,500,000  persons 
engaged  in  agriculture  (of  whom  over  7,000,000  are  of 
native  parentage).  On  the  other  hand,  in  certain  minor 
trades  like  coke-burning  and  tanning  Slavs  make  a  sub 
stantial  fraction  of  the  whole,  and  it  is  notable  how  large 
a  proportion  they  make — 143  in  a  thousand — in  the  im 
portant  group  of  miners  and  quarry  men.  If  the  census 
data  permitted  us  to  exclude  the  quarrymen  from  this 
group,  the  results  would  be  even  more  striking,  since 
quarrying  is  a  trade  which  attracts  Italians,  Finns  and 
others,  but  apparently  not  many  Slavs. 

Chart  VII  Chart  VII  compares  the  Slavs  in  six  occupations  with 

the  three  other  groups  of  foreign  parentage  which  are 
most  largely  represented  in  that  occupation.  It  should 
be  noted  that  in  this  chart  the  actual  size  of  the  different 
occupational  groups  is  not  shown,  and  that  the  numbers 
of  the  various  nationalities  in  each  occupation  are  rep 
resented  only  in  terms  of  their  proportion  to  the  Slavs 
taken  as  100.  Italians  appear  in  the  table  among  the 
laborers  and  the  coke  burners.  The  Scandinavians,  on 
the  other  hand,  appear  only  in  the  agricultural  group. 
For  the  rest,  the  Slavs  are  brought  into  comparison  with 
Irishmen,  Germans,  English  and  Welsh,  and  are  greatly 
outnumbered  by  them  in  agriculture,  as  mechanics  (in 
the  sense  here  given  to  the  word) ,  and  less  markedly  as 
iron  and  steel  workers  and  as  simple  laborers,  while  in 
work  in  mines,  coke  ovens  and  allied  occupations  they 
lead. 


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COKE,  CHARCOAL  AND  LIME  BURNERS  (137) 
Slavs 4,463.       100% 

Germans.  .  .     795.       18%  of  the  Slavs  in  this  occupation. 

Italians 681.       15% 

Irish 565.       13% 

MINERS  AND  QUARRYMEN  (86) 

Slavs 81,426.     100% 

English  and  Welsh . .  .  70,031.     86% 

Irish 51,320.     63% 

Germans 35,931.     44% 

IRON  AND  STEEL  WORKERS  (94) 

Slavs 27,643.     100% 

Germans 49,580.     179% 

Irish 47,365.     171% 

English  and  Welsh.  .  .  19,775.       72% 

LABOR  (Nor  SPECIFIED)  (35) 

Slavs 134,545.     100% 

Irish 270,027.     199% 

Germans 241,553.      178% 

Italians 93,901.       69% 

MECHANICS  (71-8,  87,  88,  101-4,  108,  109) 

Slavs    57,363.  100% 

Germans   329,577.  575% 

Irish 168,324.  293% 

English  and  Welsh  78,591.  137% 


Slavs 


AGRICULTURAL  PURSUITS  (2) 
.105,492.     100%  Germans 


.775,452.  735% 


Scandinavians.  .  .304,502.     288% 
Irish 277,155.     263% 


Percentages  of  total  Slavs  in  the  specified  occupation. 

CHART  VII.— COMPARISON,  FOR  CERTAIN  OCCUPATIONS,  BE 
TWEEN  SLAVS  AND  THE  THREE  OTHER  FOREIGN  GROUPS 
THAT  HAVE  THE  LARGEST  NUMBER  IN  THE  GIVEN  OCCU 
PATION. 

The  Slavs  in  each  occupation  are  taken  as  100  and  the  columns  represent 
ing  other  nationalities  in  the  same  occupation  are  proportioned  to  this. 
Both  their  absolute  numbers  and  the  percentage  of  Slavs  in  the  same 
occupation  are  given.  Figures  in  parentheses  following  names  of  trades 
refer  to  census  classes. 


316 


CHAPTER  XV 
SLAVS  AS  FARMERS 

Why  do  peasants  from  Bohemian  beet  fields  or  Croa-  Why  immi- 
tian  vineyards  betake  themselves  to  mines  and  foundries, 


u 
making  no  use  of  the  experience  of  a  lifetime  and  of  a  farming 

skill  which  if  often  primitive  is  sometimes  of  a  high 
order?     It  is  not,  as  is  often  assumed,  because  they  are 
eager  to  taste  city  life  or  because  the  hard  tasks  and 
narrow  round  of  country  life  are  irksome,  but,  with  most  / 
of  them  at  least,  because  of  the  hard  necessity  of  the  j 
case,  especially  in  the  beginning. 

The  explanation  of  a  Polish  writer  quoted  by  Father 
Kruszka*  fully  bears  out  this  conclusion.      At  home, 
he  says,  the  Polish  immigrants  either  had  no  property 
at  all  or  owned  at  most  only  a  tiny  piece  of  land.     In 
either  case  the  money  that  they  are  able  to  raise  when 
they  leave  home  is  hardly  more  than  enough  to  bring 
them  to  America.     They  cannot  think  of  buying  a  farm.  , 
The  position  of  a  farm  laborer  is  not  attractive  to  them 
becausg,  not  only  does  it  mean  lower  pay  than  other  em-  \ 
ployments  that  are  open  to  them,  but  it  lasts  only  a  part 
of  the  year;   so  necessarily  they  settle  in  the  city.     By    r 
the  time  that  a  family  has  saved  the  considerable  sum 
needed  to  buy  land  and  begin  farming.,,  its  members  are 
so  accustomed  to  city  life  that  it  would  be  hard  for  them 
to  change. 

There  are  other  difficulties  besides  those  named  by  this 
Polish  writer.  First,  we  must  remember  that  the  ob 
stacle  of  language  is  far  more  serious  on  the  farm  than 
in  .  the_f  actory.  A  man  once  taught  his  special  task  in 

*  "Historya  Polska  w  Ameryce,"  III,  page  in.  This  whole 
chapter  on  the  agricultural  situation  and  the  general  economic 
condition  of  Poles  in  America  has  much  interesting  matter  in  it, 
hardly  to  be  found  in  English. 


318        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

any  highly  organized  work  is,  once  for  all,  initiated;  after 
the  first  it  is  mere  repetition.  Moreover,  in  a  large  in 
dustrial  group  there  is  likely  to  be  a  fellow  countryman 
at  hand  to  interpret.  On  the  farm,  in  contrast  to  this, 
there  is  a  constant  change  of  tasks  and  an  endless  op 
portunity  for  costly  and  annoying  mistakes  from  inability 
to  understand  orders. 

Further,  it  is  an  infinitely  less  trying  change -to-go. 
from  home  to  a~gF6up~6T  countrymen  in  a  foreign  country 
than  it  is  to  leave  that  group  to  go  alone  among  Ameri 
cans.  Farm  life  is  made  forbidding  to  the  foreigner  by 
"trie"  strange  food";  the  lack  of  his  own  church  and,  above 
all,  by  his  separation  from  those  of  his  own  speech  and 
ways.  In  Europe  country  life  is  for  the  most  part 
village  life.  There  are  cases  where  peasants  live  scat 
tered,  each  on  his  own  land,  but  the  typical  settlement 
is  a  village,  clustered  close,  with  a  church  and  an  open 
place  where  perhaps  the  boys  and  girls  dance  on  Sunday 
afternoons  and  fields  about  it  stretching  out  on  every 
side.  A  man  may  have  a  long  tramp  morning  and  eve 
ning,  but  that  is  all  in  the  day's  work  as  he  conceives  it. 
The  isolation  of  the  American  farmhouse  is  a  drawback 
both  to  life  as  a  farm  Hand  and  to  life  as  an  independent 
farmer.* 

*  Mrs.  Humpal-Zeman  lays  much  stress  on  this  contrast 
between  the  lonely  farm  in  America  and  the  traditional 
holidays,  feasts,  processions,  national  music  and  games  which 
make  life  gay  in  the  old  country.  (Industrial  Commission, 
Vol.  XV,  page  508.)  An  interesting  discussion  of  conditions  on 
western  farms  is  Mr.  E.  V.  Smalley's  "The  Isolation  of  Life  on 
the  Prairie  Farm,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  Vol.  72,  p.  378  (1893).  See, 
too,  the  admirable  discussion  of  this  point  by  Miss  Jane  Addams. 
She  says:  "Regret  is  many  times  expressed  that,  notwithstand 
ing  the  fact  that  nine  out  of  every  ten  immigrants  are  of  rural 
birth  and  are  fitted  to  undertake  that  painstaking  method  of 
cultivating  the  soil  which  American  farmers  despise,  they 
nevertheless  all  tend  to  congregate  in  cities  where  their  inherited 
and  elaborate  knowledge  of  agricultural  processes  is  unutilized. 
But  it  is  characteristic  of  American  complacency  when  any 
assisted  removal  to  agricultural  regions  is  contemplated,  that 
we  utterly  ignore  the  past  experiences  of  the  immigrant  and  al 
ways  assume  that  each  family  will  be  content  to  live  in  the  middle 
of  its  own  piece  of  ground,  although  there  are  few  peoples  on  the 
face  of  the  earth  who  have  ever  tried  isolating  a  family  on  one 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  319 

Another  point  that  we  overlook  when  we  accuse  the  Reasons  for 
immigrant  of  being  clannish  is  that  he  sometimes  really 
fears  the  hostility,  or, £he  over-reaching  greed  of  American 
neighbors,  with  their  too  common  contempt  for  "foreign 
ers."  I  find  a  Bohemian  guidebook  advising  settlers 
trTaTin  certain  localities  they  will  find  no  fellow  country 
men  "so  that  the  immigrant  must  settle  among  perfect 
strangers,  in  great  part  cunning  and  capable  of  anything, 
and  might  easily,  in  consequence  of  his  ignorance  of 
the  language,  be  deprived  of  the  land  that  he  has  taken 
up  and  in  some  cases  partly  cultivated."  On  the  other 
hand,  among  a  group  of  settlers,  neighbors  at  home  and 
now  strangers  together  in  a  strange  land,  there  is  an  espe 
cial  degree  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  comfort.  This  has 
great  economic  as  well  as  moral  value.  For  instance,  in 
a  Nebraska  county  which  lost  nearly  2000  of  its  scanty 
population  in  the  three  bad  years  that  followed  the  panic 
of  1873,  the  Bohemian  and  German  homesteaders  held 

hundred  and  sixty  acres,  or  on  eighty,  or  even  on  forty.  But 
this  is  the  American  way — a  survival  of  our  pioneer  days — and 
we  refuse  to  modify  it,  even  in  regard  to  South  Italians,  although 
from  the  day  of  mediaeval  incursions  they  have  lived  in  compact 
villages  with  an  intense  and  elaborated  social  life,  so  much  of  it 
out  of  doors  and  interdependent  that  it  has  affected  almost  every 
domestic  habit.  Italian  women  knead  their  own  bread,  but 
depend  on  the  village  oven  for  its  baking,  and  the  men  would 
rather  walk  for  miles  to  their  fields  each  day  than  to  face  an 
evening  of  companionship  limited  to  the  family.  Nothing  could 
afford  a  better  check  to  the  constant  removal  to  the  cities  of 
the  farming  population  all  over  the  United  States  than  the 
possibility  of  combining  community  life  with  agricultural  occu 
pation.  This  combination  would  afford  that  development  of 
civilization  which,  curiously  enough,  density  alone  brings  and 
for  which  even  a  free  system  of  rural  delivery  is  not  an  adequate 
substitute.  Much  of  the  significance  and  charm  of  rural  life  in 
South  Italy  lies  in  its  village  companionship,  quite  as  the  dreari 
ness  of  the  American  farm  life  inheres  in  its  unnecessary  solitude. 
But  we  totally  disregard  the  solution  which  the  old  agricultural 
community  offers,  and  our  utter  lack  of  adaptability  has  some 
thing  to  do  with  the  fact  that  the  South  Italian  remains  in  the 
city,  where  he  soon  forgets  his  cunning  in  regard  to  silk  worms 
and  olive  trees,  but  continues  his  old  social  habits  to  the  extent 
of  filling  an  entire  tenement  house  with  the  people  from  one 
village."-  -"Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,"  pages  65-67. 

Much  of  what  Miss  Addams  here  says  applies  to  Slavs  as  truly 
as  to  Italians. 


320        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

out,  as  the  Americans  could  not,  against  the  grasshopper 
plague,  the  drought  and  the  hard  times.  And  the  reason 
for  this,  my  American  informant  assured  me,  was  that 
Bohemians  were  more  ready  to  help  one  another  than 
were  the  Americans.* 

Number  on         In  spite  of  all  the  difficulties,  we  dojind  considerable 

*  numbers  of  our  Slavic_rjopulation  on  farms.     The  census 

'  /  indicates  that  they  are  about  100,000,  the  majority  being 

>,  /    independent  farmers.     They  are  fairly  widely  scattered, 

for  twenty-six  states  each  have  at  least  200  of  them. 

Wisconsin  has  the  largest  number,  with  over  13,000,  and 

South  Dakota  has  the  largest  proportion,  with  about  n 

per  cent  of  its  whole  farming  population  belonging  to  the 

Slavic  group. f 

j         Bohemians    and    Poles    doubtless    make    the    great 

majority  of  the  Slavic  farmers  in  the  United  States. 
•> 

The  Bohemians  certainly  have  a  larger  proportion  of  their 
total  number  on  farms  than  has  any  other  Slavic  group 
and  it  may  be  that  they  have  a  larger  absolute  number 
though  an  exact  knowledge  of  the  facts  is  impossible. 
It  is  common  to  estimate  that  one-half  of  the  Bohemians 
in  the  United  States  are  living  in  country  places  and  oc 
cupied  either  with  farming  or  with  some  one  of  the  vari 
ous  employments  incident  to  rural  life,  from  shoemaking 
to  keeping  store  or  acting  as  notary  public.  If  the  com 
parison  be  extended  to  all  groups  of  foreign  parentage, 
Bohemia  J  shows  a  larger  proportion  engaged  in  agricul 
ture  than  any  foreign  countries  except  Switzerland,  Den 
mark  and  Norway,  surpassing  even  Germany  and  Sweden. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Italy  has  a  very  low  rank  in 
this  regard ;  even  Poland  and  Russia  surpass  her,  lowered 
as  their  place  is  by  the  large  non-agricultural  Jewish 
element,  and  only  Hungary  is  below  her. 

Of   the    Poles,    Father    Kruszka   thinks   that   barely 

*  An  instance  of  this  occurs  in  "  The  True  Story  of  a  Bohe 
mian  Pioneer  "  which  follows  this  chapter, 
t  See  Appendix  XXII,  page  469. 
j  The  statements  refer  to  persons  of  specified  parentage. 


321 


322        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

one-third  are  on  farms,  yet  for  1901  he  estimates  that  700 
out  of  900  Polish  settlements  were  agricultural.  The 
total  number  of  Poles  on  farms,  including  hired  laborers, 
women  and  children,  he  puts  at  500,000.  Among  these 
are  70,000  farm  owners,  possessing,  as  he  calculates,  an 
average  of  about  80  acres  apiece.  This  would  give  to 
Polish  landowners  a  total  area  equal  to  over  two-thirds 
of  Rhode  Island. 

Besides    Bohemians   and    Poles    there    are    larger   or 
smaller  numbers  of  farmers  among  most  of  the   other 
Slavic  groups  and  probably  among  all;    certainly  Slo 
vaks,    Ruthenians,    Slovenians,    Croatians,    Dalmatians 
and  Russians  furnish  farmers.     Among  Servians,  Monte 
negrins  and  Bulgarians  I  do  not  happen  to  have  learned 
of  any,  which  does  not,  however,  prove  a  negative. 
Varieties  of        Map  XI  shows  where  the  Slavs  have  chiefly  taken  up 
district^          land.     They  are  in  roughly  five  groups  of  states  repre 
senting  five  kinds  of  farming. 

1.  The    Wooded     States — Wisconsin,     Michigan     and 
Minnesota — where  the  settler  had  to  clear  his  land  and 
where  he  today  raises  wheat,  potatoes,  dairy  products, 
fruit  and  vegetables  for  canning,  and  so  forth. 

2.  The  Prairie  States — Iowa,  Nebraska,  Kansas  and 
the  Dakotas — where  the  settler  found  the  virgin  prairie 
and  where  he  now  raises  corn  and  wheat. 

3.  The    Southwestern    States — Texas,   Oklahoma,   Mis 
souri  and  Arkansas — where,  in  parts  at  least,  cotton  is 
king. 

4.  The    Pacific    Slope — Washington,    California    and 
Oregon — where   fruit   and  especially  grapes  are  grown, 
and  where  Bohemians,  Dalmatians  and  Slovenians  have 
settled. 

5.  The     Eastern     States — New     York,     Connecticut, 
Massachusetts,    New    Jersey    and     Pennsylvania — with 
diversified  and  "  truck  "  farming.     Settlements  in  Illinois, 
Ohio,  and  Indiana,  Maryland  and  Virginia  share  many 
characteristics  with  this  group. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  323 

When  the  Poles  and  more  especially  the  Bohemians  Western 
began  to  come,  scatteringly  in  the  forties  and  in  con-  pioneers  and 
siderable  numbers  in  the  fifties  and  later,  they  passed  land-owners 
almost  without   stopping   through   the   Atlantic   states 
and  through  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois,  and  went  on  to 
the  states  where  they  could  then  get  land  free  as  home 
steaders  or  at  cheap  rates.     Consequently  they  settled 
first  in  Wisconsin,   Michigan  and  Minnesota,  where  it 
was  necessary  to  cut  timber  to  clear  the  land,  and  some 
what  later  in  the  prairie  states  farther  west,  in  Iowa, 
Nebraska  and  the  Dakotas.     Those  that  came  up  from 
the  Gulf  ports  settled,  too,  in  Texas. 

The  Bohemian  settlements  in  Kewaunee  county, 
Wisconsin,  the  early  hardships  of  which  have  been 
described  in  Chapter  XI,  are  a  good  example  of  farming 
in  the  timber  belt.*  Today  the  hard  old  times  seem  far 
behind,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  see  signs  of  prosperity  on 
every  hand ;  the  roomy  farmhouses  of  wood  or  of  yellow 
brick,  with  rows  of  poplars  about  the  yard,  the  big, 
well-built  barns,  the  thrifty  fields,  and  the  cheese  fac 
tories.  ' '  Ten  years  ago  every  other  farm  was  mortgaged ; 
today  not  one  in  seven,"  I  was  told.  Land  is  worth 
five  times  its  old  value.  Where  twelve  years  before 
Bohemian  farmers  were  borrowing  at  8  or  9  per  cent, 
in  1906  they  paid  4  per  cent.  They  have  a  good  bank 
of  their  own,  and  altogether  are  a  very  substantial  class. 

The  Poles  were  generally  poorer  than  the  Bohemians 
when  they  began,  so  that  they  commonly  secured  in 
ferior  land,  harder  to  clear  and  less  fertile  when  cleared. 
Yet  they  have  done  well,  too.  Portage  County,  Wis 
consin,  is  a  great  Polish  district,  and  about  Stevens 
Point  and  Poloniaf  in  that  county  I  found  very  good  look 
ing  Polish  farms  with  great  stacks  of  yellow  wheat  straw 
behind  the  barns.  At  Stevens  Point  it  was  quaint  to  see 
a  typical  Galician  market  scene,  minus  the  element  of 

*  See  also  Miss  Mashek's  admirable  article  already  referred 
to,  "Bohemian  Farmers  of  Wisconsin."  Charities,  XIII,  pages 
211-214  (Dec.  3,  1904). 

fFor  further  data  as  to  this  settlement,  see  above,  page  258. 


324        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Farming  on 

wooded 

land 


Prairie 
states 


costume, — the  big  square  littered  with  straw  and  full  of 
farm  wagons  and  hobnobbing  country  folk.* 

Not  only  were  the  wooded  states  easier  to  reach  at 
first,  but  it  was  and  is  possible  to  begin  with  less  capital  in 
timber  than  in  prairie  country.  Today  the  advantages 
are  probably  even  more  than  they  were  earlier.  A  land 
agent  in  Nebraska  connected  with  a  Bohemian  farming 
paper  says,  "Breaking  prairie  costs  two  or  three  dollars 
an  acre,  while  land  that  has  been  cut  over  and  partly 
cleared  can  be  planted  at  once  among  the  stumps  with 
out  preliminary  expense  and  yields  besides  wood  enough 
for  buildings  and  fences.  To  remove  the  stumps  imme 
diately  costs  too  much,  and  if  they  are  of  soft  wood  it 
takes  them  twenty-five  years  to  rot  away.  The  whole 
plan  of  farming  is  different  on  the  two  kinds  of  lands, 
even  different  ploughs  are  needed,  but  no  one  ever  fails 
who  settles  in  the  timber. ' ' 

"Two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,"  I  was  told,  "is 
enough  to  begin  farming  under  such  conditions.  A  man 
works  for  two  or  three  or  four  years  in  a  city,  and  then 
makes  a  start.  Many  begin  with  only  $50  or  $100. 
Nowadays  they  buy  perhaps  40  acres  at  $5.00  or  $10  an 
acre,  clear  as  much  of  it  as  they  can,  and  build  a  little 
shanty.  Somehow  or  other  they  manage  to  get  an  old 
horse.  All  the  family  work,  and  in  winter  the  man  very 
likely  goes  off  to  the  woods  where  he  can  earn  good 
wages,  $35  or  $40  a  month,  with  board. "f 

On  a —prairie  •  farm  conditions  differ  considerably. 
No  one  wants  less  than  160  acres,  and  besides  land  the 

*  An  interesting  early  Polish  settlement  dating  back  to  1876 
or  before  was  that  at  Radom,  Illinois.  The  settlers  there  had 
worked  in  Chicago  factories  till  they  had  saved  enough  to  buy 
land.  They  are  said  to  have  very  comfortable  houses,  a  church, 
school  and  hotel,  to  use  the  best  agricultural  machinery,  and  to 
enjoy  the  services  of  an  exceptionally  good  teacher.  The  latter 
was  a  priest  and  a  patriot,  who  had  lost  one  arm  in  the  Polish 
Revolution,  He  held  a  position  in  a  Canadian  university  when 
he  heard  of  this  colony  and  went  there  to  teach  the  Polish  chil 
dren. 

f  See  for  a  similar  account  Kruszka:  "Historya  Polska  w 
Ameryce,"  III,  page  118,  where  detailed  data  are  given. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  325 

farmer^must  have  buildings,  machinery  and  stock.  For 
this  at  least  $1500  is  needed.  "  I  alwa)^s  say  I  will  pay 
no  attention  to  any  one  with  under  $1000,"  the  agent 
said.  "They  are  afraid  of  mortgages,  and  pay  cash,  at 
$5.00  an  acre;  therefore  they  need  $800  for  the  land 
alone.  The  rest  goes  for  stock,  machinery,  breaking  the 
land,  and  the  support  of  the  family  till  returns  begin  to 
come  in." 

Iowa,  which  formerly  attracted  many  Bohemians, 
and  eastern  Kansas  are  now  what  Ohio  was  in  the  early 
days;  that  is,  too  fully  settled  and  too  expensive  for 
the  newly  arrived  immigrant,  since  land  costs  perhaps 
$125  an  acre.  Yet  I  was  told  that  a  family  might  even 
now  begin  with  only  $500  by  hiring  a  farm  at  $3.50  to 
$4.00  an  acre,  or  by  farming  on  shares  (the  terms  being 
one-half  of  the  corn  crop,  two-fifths  of  the  oats). 

In  a  town  which  I  visited  in  Iowa  the  settlement  of 
Bohemians  was  an  old  one,  dating  back  to  the  fifties 
and  sixties.  They  are  now  well  established.  The  old 
log  houses  have  been  replaced  by  good  frame  cottages, 
the  old  isolation  is  largely  done  away  with  by  rural  free 
delivery,  and  the  telephone  is  in  general  use.  They  have 
a  bank  and  good  stores,  but  I  imagine  that  the  great 
mail  order  houses  in  Chicago,  which  publish  special 
Bohemian  catalogues,  do  a  good  business  among  them. 
We  visited  the  house  of  one  such  Bohemian  farmer,  who 
came  to  this  country  when  a  child.  The  house  was  not 
large,  but  a  comfortable  clapboarded  cottage,  nicely  fur 
nished,  and  very  neat.  Behind  it  stood  what  remained 
of  the  original  little  loghouse,  now  used  for  some  farm 
purpose.  One  little  daughter  played  the  parlor  organ, 
self-taught;  all  eight  children  went  to  the  public  school, 
and  talked  English  among  themselves,  but  Bohemian 
with  their  mother. 

All  through  this  western    region,   covering    our  first!  Indepen- 
three  groups  of  states,  the  independent  farmer  is  the  type. 
Here   the  immigrant  did  not  start  as  a  Hired  laborer 
and  work  his  way  up,  but  began  at  once  on  his  arrival 


326        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

to  farm  on  his  own  account.  To  do  this  he  had  to  come 
with  his  capital  in  hand  ready  to  invest.  We  do  not 
realize  how  much  this  sort  of  thing  still  goes  on.  For 
instance,  I  was  told  of  a  group  of  seven  Bohemians  going 
to  Nebraska  in  June,  1906.  Most  of  them  had  $3000 ;  the 
poorest  had  $1900.  They  had  come  without  their  fami 
lies,  whom  they  were  to  return  to  fetch  when  they  had 
selected  their  land.  In  a  little  town  in  Texas  I  met  a  Bo 
hemian  couple  who  had  just  arrived  with  a  considerable 
sum  with  which  they  proposed  to  buy  land.  A  Bohemian 
pastor  was  helping  them  to  select  a  location,  and  as  he 
had  a  fine  place  of  his  own  with  a  charming  vineyard, 
they  had  the  benefit  of  skilled  advice.  And  how  good 
those  endless  stretches  of  dark  soil  on  which  the  cotton 
was  just  beginning  to  sprout  must  have  looked  to  them. 

The  Pacific         Of  the  Pacific    Slope  I  know  nothing  at   first   hand. 

slope  j  am  £0^  Q£  f^t  raising,  and  especially  of  vineyards  and 

the  production  of  wine  carried  on  with  great  success 
by  Bohemians  and  by  various  of  the  South  Slav  groups, 
notably  Dalmatians.  One  informant  tells  me  of  a 
Dalmatian  farm  in  California  through  which  it  takes 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  to  drive  with  a  good  horse, 
past  corn  on  the  one  hand  and  wheat  on  the  other.  This 
estate  is  said  to  be  worth  from  one  to  two  million  dollars. 
Another  large  enterprise  is  that  of  the  Bohemian  firm, 
F.  Korbel  Brothers,  founded  in  1862  and  incorporated 
in  1903. 

The  census  figures  give  insignificant  numbers  of  Slavs 
in  agriculture  in  California  and  Oregon,  and  even  fewer 
in  Washington.*  It  must  be  remembered,  however, 
that  in  California  both  Bohemian  and  Dalmatian  set 
tlement  dates  back  to  the  early  days  and  on  this  account 
the  figures  may  not  fully  represent  the  presence  of 
Slavic  stock. 

On  farms  in       Sla.vic  Jajmiiigjnjiie  eastern  states  (meaning  here  the 

the  East          group   of  states  included  under   5   in  the  classification 
given  above)  has  a  different  history  and  is  of  a  different 
*Cf.  Appendix  XXII,  page  469. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  327 

type.  It  began  later,  and  occupies  more  Poles  and  fewer 
Bohemians.  Whereas  in  the  three  western  groups  of 
states  the  majority  are  independent  farmers  who  came 
from  the  old  country  with  money  to  buy  land  in  America, 
in  this _jgroup^..lhe-^hir-ed  -farm  laborer  predominates.* 
Arriving  with  no  means,  he  earns  perhaps  $25  a  month 
besides  his  board. f  Before  long  it  may  be  he  marries  a 
Polish  girl  (who  has  meanwhile  been  saving  a  good  part 
of  her  weekly  wage  of  $3.50  as  a  servant)  and  goes  to 
farming  for  himself. 

Interesting  examples  of  Polish  farming  may  be  found 
at  many  places  in  the  Connecticut  valley,  J  for  instance 
in  Massachusetts  in  the  stretch  between  Northampton 
and  Greenfield, — in  Hadley,  Hatfield,  Sunderland  and 
South  Deerfield.  The  numbers  in  these  places  are  small 
compared  with  those  in  the  neighboring  manufacturing 
centres  like  Chicopee  and  Webster,  (credited  with  5000 
Poles  each),  or  Holyoke,  Worcester,  Palmer,  Ludlow, 
Westfield,  Ware,  Greenfield,  Turners  Falls,  Clinton  and 
Fitchburg,  with  their  smaller  but  still  considerable 

*  While  in  the  states  that  I  have  included  in  my  two  western 
groups  the  Slavs  showed  in  1900,  nearly  seventeen  farmers  to 
every  ten  farm  laborers,  in  the  eastern  group  there  were  forty- 
four  farm  laborers  to  every  ten  farmers.  By  Slavs  is  here 
meant  persons  whose  parents  were  born  in  Austria,  Bohemia, 
Hungary,  Poland  or  Russia.  For  an  explanation  of  this  usage 
see  page  311. 

t  A  local  informant  supplies  the  following  account  of  monthly 
wages  of  farm  laborers  for  the  neighborhood  of  Deerfield,  Mass. 

1875-80  (before  coming  of  Poles)  $30-335. 

1880,       for  Poles,  $8-$  10  at  first. 

$i6-$i8  after  3  to  5  years, 
for  Americans,  $i6-$25. 

1907         for  Poles,  $2o-$28. 

for  Americans,  $25-332. 

1909         for  Poles,  $i8-$22. 

for  Americans,  $23~$28. 

J  This  invasion  of  the  Connecticut  valley  by  Poles  has  at 
tracted  considerable  attention.  See  an  article  by  E.  K. 
Titus  in  the  New  England  Magazine,  Oct.,  1903,  and  a  more 
recent  study  by  Miss  Elizabeth  S.  Tyler  in  the  Smith  College 
Monthly  for  June,  1909;  also  articles  in  the  Boston  Daily  Globe, 
June  29,  1902,  the  Springfield  Sunday  Union  of  January  7, 
1906,^116  New  York  Herald  of  January  14,  1906,  and  the  Boston 
Evening  Transcript,  May  8  and  August  4,  1909.  For  an  account 
of  the  bringing  of  Poles  to  this  district  see  above,  page  240,  ff. 


328 


SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE-  UNITED    STATES 


Poles  in  Old 
Hadley       I 


Polish  industrial  colonies.  But  the  significance  of  the 
country  settlements  lies  not  in  numbers  but  in  the  pro 
portion  of  the  Poles  to  the  native-born,  and  in  the 
permanence  of  their  position  as  land-owners. 
-  The  most  striking  settlement  is  at  Old  Hadley,  in 
Massachusetts.  Here,  where  Goffe,  the  regicide,  is  said 
I  to  have  once  helped  beat  off  an  Indian  raid,  two-thirds 
of  the  births  in  1906  were  Polish.*  All  up  and  dowrn 
the  beautiful  elm-shaded  street  the  old  colonial  man 
sions  are  occupied  by  Poles.  Probably  one  cause  of  the 
attractiveness  of  these  New  England  farms  is  the  com 
pact  village  life,  so  different  from  western  settlements, 
with  each  man  on  his  isolated  quarter  section. 

The  way  up  As  already  said,  the  typical  case  here  is  the  immigrant 
who  begins  as  a  hired  man  at  a  monthly  wage.  In  this 
position  he  learns  to  raise  tobacco  and  onions,  the  staples 
of  the  district,  and  after  a  time  may  either  buy  or  hire 
land,  or  take  it  on  shares.  In  the  latter  case  the  landlord 
furnishes  one-half  the  seed  and  all  the  fertilizer,  and 
receives  in  return  one-half  the  crop.  This  plan  makes  it 
possible  to  begin  with  almost  no  capital,  but  many 
buy  outright  when  they  have  only  $200  or  $300,  borrow 
ing  the  rest  (perhaps  $1000)  either  from  relatives  or  on 
a  mortgage.  Relatives  generally  take  no  interest  on 
loans  to  one  another.  Tobacco  land  is  valued  at  perhaps 
$180  an  acre,  onion  land  at  perhaps  $150. 

Advancing  in  this  way,  many  have  bought  farms,  or 
at  least  a  house  and  lot  of  land.  In  1906,  out  of  13,000 
acres  of  assessed  land  in  Hadley  over  700  acres,  or  more 
than  a  twentieth  of  the  whole,  was  in  Polish  hands.  Of 
persons  paying  taxes  on  property,  they  made  one  in  ten. 
Their  holdings  were  below  the  average  in  value,  as  is 
natural,  but  forty -four  persons  among  them  owned, 


Amount  of 
property 
held  by 
Poles 


*  In  1905  natives  of  Austria  and  Russia  (who  are  here 
practically  synonymous  with  Poles),  made  372  out  of  570  foreign 
born  in  a  total  population  of  1,895;  that  is,  they  were  approxi 
mately  two-thirds  of  the  foreign  population  and  one-fifth  of  the 
whole.  The  other  foreign  born  were  Irish  no,  French  Canadian 
33,  Italian  23,  scattering  32. 


IN  OLD  HADLEY 

1.  The  home  of  four  or  five  Polish  families.  2.  A  home  of  a  poorer  class,  the  front  used  for  a  small  store.  3.  One 
of  three  farmsteads  owned  by  successful  Polish  farmer  and  onion  dealer.  4.  A  colonial  home  of  Old  Hadley  that  now 
houses  four  or  five  Polish  families.  5  and  6.  Polish  door  yards. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  '     329 

together,  real  estate  assessed  at  nearly  $57,000,  or  almost 
$1300  each,  besides  an  average  of  about  $150  worth  each 
of  stock  and  other  personal  property  owned  by  thirty- 
seven  persons.  That  is,  Poles  making  not  quite  20 
per  cent  of  the  population  of  the  town  owned  5.3  per 
cent  of  the  taxable  area,  5.7  per  cent  of  the  taxable 
value  in  real  estate,  and  3.1  per  cent  of  the  personal 
property. 

These  averages  and  aggregates  naturally  cover  a 
considerable  diversity  of  individual  circumstances. 
Among  the  owners  of  real  estate,  for  instance,  they  range 
from  one  man  with  over  one  hundred  acres  of  land,  a 
house,  a  barn,  tobacco  sheds,  farm  stock,  etc.,  to  a  man 
with  three-quarters  of  an  acre  of  land  and  a  house  and 
barn  worth  $300.  In  a  neighboring  town  we  found  a  man 
who  is  said  to  have  made  a  fortune  by  "cornering" 
onions,  who  owns  three  farms,  and  lives  with  his  family 
in  a  good,  old-fashioned  New  England  farmhouse. 

When  the  Poles  hire  the  old  American  houses,  they  Housing 
may  use  them  as  tenements,  four  or  five  families  to  a  a 
house.  Moreover,  they  may  take  boarders,  and  this 
practice  is  said  to  be  on  the  increase  except  among  the 
well-to-do  in  towns.  One  hears  stories  in  Hadley  of  over 
crowding  and  of  payments  of  fifteen  cents  a  night  for  a 
place  to  lie  on  the  floor.  Generally  a  boarder  pays  per 
haps  $4.00  a  month,  which  covers  cooking,  but  he  buys 
his  own  food.  The  farming  of  the  Poles  is  regarded  as 
inferior  by  the  Americans;  their  great  economic  advan 
tage  lies  in  the  fact  that  not  only  do  they  themselves  work 
instead  of  hiring  labor,  but  that  all  the  members  of  the 
family,  women  and  children  as  well  as  men,  work  in  the 
fields.* 

*  A  friend  in  Greenfield  writes:  "The  women  and  girls,  as 
is  necessary  in  onion  weeding,  dress  like  the  men  in  overalls  and 
without  shoes  and  stockings.  It  is  a  familiar  but  picturesque 
sight,  and  one  typically  representative  of  their  great  patience, 
dogged  perseverance  and  thrift,  to  see  them,  in  blue  jeans  and 
huge  straw  hats,  slowly  crawling  on  their  hands  and  knees  up 
and  down  the  long  rows,  astraddle  the  slender  green  onion  tops, 
pulling  out  the  tiny  weeds  which  no  machine  can  reach.  They 


Citizenship 


Polish 
increase 


330      SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

I  It  seems  surprising  that  with  so  many  property  owners 
there  are  only  ten  Poles  in  Hadley  who  are  naturalized 
One  American,  at  least,  who  talked  with  us  about  it, 
was  much  opposed  to  their  gaining  the  vote,  and  if  this 
feeling  is  common  it  may  be  the  reason  why  so  few  have 
become  citizens. 

The  figures  as  to  property  are  striking  enough,  but  much 
less  so  than  the  Hadley  vital  statistics,  which  show  that 
in  the  year  1906  the  Poles  account  for  48  per  cent  of  the 
deaths,  52  per  cent  of  the  marriages,  and  66  per  cent  of  the 
births;  that  is,  that  they  are  increasing  out  of  proportion 
to  the  native  element.  In  school  the  children  are  136  out 
of  573  (24  per  cent),  an  increase  over  the  year  before  of 
19.3  per  cent  for  the  Polish  children,  while  the  whole 
number  of  children  increased  only  10.5  per  cent.  In  es 
timating  the  importance  of  this  situation  we  must  bear  in 
mind  the  small  scale  of  it  all,  and  that  the  figures  are  for  a 
single  year  only.  We  must  not  suppose,  either,  that 
there  are  many  Hadleys;  but  all  these  qualifications  do 
not  rob  the  situation  of  significance. 

Girls  often  come  over  alone  as  servants,  and  readily 
get  places.  Of  thirteen  Polish  marriages  in  Hadley  in 
1906,  the  bride  was  entered  as  servant  or  domestic  in 
all  except  one,  where  she  was  called  a  "housekeeper." 
The  bridegrooms  were  ten  "laborers"  and  three  "farm 
ers."  They  do  not  seem  to  marry  excessively  early,  as 
the  youngest  Hadley  bride  was  eighteen,  the  youngest 
groom  twenty  years  old. 

However  well  one  may  think  of  the  Pole,  the  New 
Englander  may  be  pardoned  a  pang  of  regret  as  he  sees 
the  old  American  stock  shrink  away,  partly  through 
withdrawal  to  the  money-making  centres,  partly  by  a 
sort  of  racial  dry  rot  which  shows  itself  in  the  miserably 

do  not  stop  to  rest  even  on  the  hottest  days,  and  at  noon  the 
women  go  back  to  the  house,  prepare  the  meal,  and  bring  it  out 
to  the  men."  A  very  similar  account  of  Polish  onion  raising 
in  Orange  County,  New  York,  is  given  in  an  article  "The  Black 
Dirt  People"  by  Henry  H.  Moore  in  The  Outlook  for  Dec.  25, 
1909,  pages  949-957. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  331 

deficient  birth  rate.  It  is  with  a  rather  rueful  smile  that 
he  observes  the  swarms  of  funny  little  tots,  with  their 
tow  heads  bundled  in  kerchiefs,  that  cluster  about  the 
doors  of  the  old  white  farmhouses.  But  if  any  one  is 
to  be  blamed,  it  is  certainly  not  the  hardworking  new 
comer  who  has  left  home  and  all  for  his  chance  here. 

Another  difference  between  East  and  West  is  that  in  The  immi- 

the  East  there  is.,  of course -no  pioneer  element.     The 

farms  bought  or  hired  by  Poles,  Bohemians  and  other 
Slavs  anywhere  east  of  Wisconsin  and  Iowa  are  farms 
that  Americans  have  let  go.  This  contrast  between  the 
pioneer  who  brings  wild  land  under  the  plough  and  the 
settler  in  old  communities  deserves  emphasis  because 
some  writers  on  immigration,  as  for  instance  Professor 
Mayo-Smith,  make  much  of  the  difference  between 
"colonists"  prior  to  the  Revolution  and  "immigrants" 
since,  on  the  ground,  in  part  at  least,  that  the  latter  have 
done  none  of  the  hard  work  of  settling  the  country. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  large  part  of  the  colonists  came  to 
dw^ell  in  settled  and  orderly  communities,  while  from  the 
Revolution  to  the  present  moment,  and  from  Kentucky 
to  Alaska,  the  immigrant  has  been  among  the  frontiers 
men  and  has  worked  in  the  van  in  the  conquest  of  the 
continent. 

I  shall  always  recall  with  pleasure  an  evening  spent  on 
a  cool,  wide  piazza  in  a  little  Nebraska  town,  listening 
to  the  story  of  my  Bohemian  hostess,  which  I  have  tried 
to  reproduce  as  "The  True  Story  of  a  Bohemian  Pioneer." 
It  was  hard  to  realize  that  the  quiet-voiced,  middle-aged 
lady  beside  me  had  lived  as  a  girl  in  a  dug-out,  had  herself 
"broken  prairie" — heart-breaking  labor  for  a  man — had 
endured  storms  and  famine,  rattlesnake  bites  and  plagues 
of  grasshoppers,  droughts  and  floods.  It  seemed  strange 
that  she  could  have  lived  to  see  the  treeless  and  unin 
habited  prairie  covered  with  stacked  wheat  and  shaded 
farmhouses,  and  the  scattered  sod  houses  replaced  by  a 
pleasant,  well-built  town  with  a  friendly,  honest  Bohe 
mian  air;  with  good  houses,  gardens  and  shade  trees; 


332        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Agricultural 

settlement 

spontaneous 


The  r61e  of 
the  land 
agent 


with  a. court  house,  churches,  a  Bohemian  cemetery,  and 
an  "opera  house"  for  Bohemian  theatricals. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  aspects  of  the  facts  here 
presented  is  the  considerable  degree  to  which  Slavic 
peasants  are  taking  root  in  the  land  without  any  artificial 
stimulus.  So  far  as  I  know  there  has  not  been  any 
concerted  effort  to  promote  their  distribution, — nothing, 
at  least,  comparable  to  what  has  been  done  to  open  oppor 
tunities  for  agricultural  life  to  Jews  and  Italians.  The. 


Slavs  present  no  such  problem  of  congestion  as  do  the 
Jews,_to  render  Americans  uneasy,  nor  have  they,  like 
the  Jews,  a  body  of  wealthy  men  to  aid  the  poorer 
among  them.  Neither  does  any  home  government 
concern  itself  .to  forward"  their  interests,  as  Italy  concerns 
herself  for  her  expatriated  citizens. 

One  might  suppose  that  the  race  of  the  Mir  and  the 
Zadruga,  the  communal  village  and  the  "house  com 
munion,"  would  have  developed  co-operative  farming 
colonies  here,  but  aside  from  the  Doukhobor  settlement 
in  Canada,  this  does  not  seem  to  be  the  case.  From 
time  to  time  co-operative  colonies  of  one  sort  and  an 
other  have  been  proposed  and  actually  undertaken, 
but  they  appear  to  fail  regularly.  "  It  never  does  among 
Slavs,"  agreed  three  informants  in  chorus,  a  Slovenian, 
a  Slovak  and  a  Bohemian.* 

The  initiative  toward  settlement  on  the  land  doubtless 
comes  largely  from  the  energy  of  those  who  have  lands 
to  sell  and  who  use  every  art  to  induce  settlers  to  come 
to  them.  The  so-called  immigration  departments  of  the 
southern  and  western  railroads  are  vast  enterprises, 

*  An  instance  cited  was  an  agitation  started  by  a  Slovenian 
priest  about  1896  for  a  co-operative  farming  colony  in  California 
with  a  capital  of  $40,000.  But  "they  expected  too  much" 
and  failed.  Mrs.  Humpal-Zeman,  too,  writing  of  the  Bohemians, 
says  that  attempts  at  "colonies"  fail,  and  tells  of  one  started  on 
a  co-operative  basis  on  a  plantation  in  Virginia  by  an  association 
formed  for  the  purpose.  The  plan  was  started  in  1897  in  Chicago 
as  a  result  of  the  depression  of  that  time,  but  the  families  who 
actually  went  to  the  spot  did  not  stay  long,  and  the  whole  thing 
broke  up.  See  Report  of  the  Industrial  Commission,  XV, 
page  508. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  333 

spending  freely  on  advertising,  traveling  agents,  excur 
sions  for  "colonists"  and  "home-seekers",  on  "North 
ern  settlers'  conventions"  and  on  every  possible  method 
of  attraction.  For  instance,  the  Santa  Fe  road  has  strips 
of  model  gardening  along  its  tracks  in  various  places 
to  demonstrate  the  qualities  of  soil  and  climate.  These 
efforts  are  aimed  mainly  at  drawing  settlers  from  other 
states,  but  the  suction  affects  the  immigrant  from 
Europe  as  well  as  the  native  American.  Moreover, 
various  southern  states,  through  official  boards  and 
otherwise,  have  done  much  active  canvassing  for  immi 
grants  from  abroad.  Though  they  seem  not  yet  to  have 
made  the  discovery,  they  are  likely  in  the  course  of 
time  to  learn  that  in  the  Southern  Slav,  as  well  as  in  the 
Bohemian  and  Pole,  they  have  a  thrifty,  hard  working 
people,  many  of  whom  are  used  to  fruit  culture  and  to  a 
hot  sun.* 

Besides  the  railroads  and  the  state  commissions,  there    i 
are,  of  course,  numerous  private  land  agents  and  pro-   \ 
moters.     One   hears   that   there   have   been   occasional   ' 
"ITrJominable  land  promotion  schemes,  decoying  settlers 
on  to  wretched  land,  and  one  such,  real  or  fictitious,  has 
found  a  place  in  literature  in  Sienkiewicz's  heart-rending 
story,  "After  Bread, "f  which  reminds  one  of  nothing  so 
much  as  of  the  similar  picture  in  Martin  Chuzzlewit. 

In  Chicago  I  had  an  interesting  talk  with  a  real  estate 
agent  who  was  colonizing  Bohemians  and  Poles  in  places 

*  For  an  account  of  Southern  efforts  to  attract  immigrants, 
see  Fleming,  W.  L. :  "Immigration  to  the  Southern  States." 
Pol.  Sci.  Quar.,  XX,  page  276  (1905). 

t  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  story  is  said  to  have  been 
written  in  the  interests  of  the  Polish  landlords  with  the  intention 
of  deterring  from  emigration.  The  following  frank  admission 
which  occurs  in  this  story  is  interesting,  coming  from  so  good  a 
German  hater  as  Sienkiewicz. 

The  land  company  having  failed  to  survey  and  allot  the  land 
among  the  settlers,  "a  body  of  Germans,"  says  Sienkiewicz, 
"would  have  combined  together  to  clear  the  woods,  build  houses, 
and  then  would  have  measured  off  to  each  man  his  portion,"  but 
the  Poles,  "at  the  beginning,  wanted  each  to  settle  on  his  own 
land,  to  build  his  own  house  and  to  cut  down  trees  on  his  own 
lot.  .  .  .  Thereupon  arose  contentions." 


334        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Guides  for 
immigrants 


in  Lake  -County,  Michigan.  He  claimed  that  a  family 
could  "make  a  nice  start"  with  $500.  "They  would 
buy,  say,  eighty  acres  at  $3.50  to  $5.00  an  acre,  making 
a  first  payment  of  a  dollar  an  acre.  They  could  pay  up 
.in  five  years,  and  after  the  first  two  years  it  would  be 
easy.  Building  material  for  the  house  would  cost  $100, 
and  they  could  put  it  up  themselves  with  the  help  of  the 
neighbors.  Outfit  and  team  would  cost  $200,  and  they 
would  have  $100  left  to  live  on.  A  cow  and  twenty-five 
chickens  wrould  almost  make  a  living."  The  school 
authorities  had  agreed  to  put  up  a  school  house  for  any 
three  families.  He  arranged  settlements  of  each  nation 
ality  by  itself.  The  Bohemians  liked  sandy  soil,  the 
Poles  wanted  clay  and  preferred  Wisconsin  to  Michigan. 
It  would  have  been  interesting  to  hear  the  other  side 
and  learn  how  the  settlers'  actual  experience  compared 
with  this  prospectus. 

An  example  of  similar  efforts  on  a  larger  scale  is  the 
work  of  the  business  agent  (himself  an  American)  of  a 
Bohemian  farming  magazine  published  in  Omaha.  He 
selects  a  location  belonging  to  some  land  company,  visits 
the  place  and  judges  its  characteristics,  and  proceeds 
to  procure  settlers  by  writing  it  up,  article  after  article, 
j  Another  aid  to  settlement  are  handbooks  for  immi 
grants,  giving  information  as  to  the  relative  advantages 
of  different  localities,  as  to  fields  of  employment,  range 
of  wages,  price  of  land,  crops,  and  so  forth.  Of  these  I 
have  seen  two  admirable  specimens,  one  for  Bohemians,* 
one,  already  spoken  of,  for  Slovenians,  f  both  written  by 
men  of  the  nationality  in  question,  in  their  own  language. 
Here  again,  in  contrast  to  Professor  Ellis 's  "Guida  per 
gl'Immigranti  Italiani,"  or  Mrs.  Severance's  guide  pub 
lished  in  many  languages,  the  undertaking  represents 
no  outside  influence,  but  comes  from  within  the  group 
itself. 

*  Rosicky,  Jan:  "Jak  je  v  Americe."  Ndrodni  Tiskdrny 
Press,  Omaha,  Neb.,  1906. 

f  Sustersic,  Rev.  F.  J. :  "Poduk  Rojakom  Slovencem." 
Amcrikanski  Slovenec  Press,  Joliet,  111.,  1903. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  335 

The  most  important  question  with  regard  to  this  whole  Transition 
matter  is  not  how  many  peasant  immigrants  have  taken  J°  *ar.m*ng 
up  farming  on  their  arrival  here,  but  rather  how  many  of  I  try 
the  much  greater  numbers  who  have  gone  into  industry  j 
and  mining  leave  those  pursuits  later  for  the  farm.  The  f 
younger  generation,  brought  up  in  the  city,  are  not  likely 
to  go  "back  to  the  land"  as  they  grow  up.  Their 
associations,  ambitions  and  habits  will  all  be  of  the  town, 
and  there  is  no  immediate  outlook  for  such  a  change  of 
direction  in  our  school  education,  or  such  a  shifting  of 
comparative  wages  and  profits  in  the  economic  world,  as 
to  induce  a  return  current  from  the  city.  The  first 
generation,  the  immigrants  themselves,  must  make  the 
change  if  it  is  to  be  made.  "When  they  arrive  is  the 
time  to  talk  land  to  them  but  then  they  have  not  the 
money,"  said  one  informant,  and  if  they  have  not  saved 
the  needed  money  before  losing  their  land  hunger,  then 
that  chance  is  gone.  There  are  those,  however,  who 
save  and  go  to  farming  with  their  savings.  While  most 
of  those  who  have  bought  farms  have  hitherto  belonged 
to  the  comparatively  small  number  who  come  with 
money  in  hand  for  this  purpose,  there  are  also  those  who 
have  earned  the  money  here.  Sometimes,  as  seems  to  be 
commonly  the  case  among  the  Poles  in  the  Connecticut 
valley,  the  necessary  money  for  independent  farming  is 
earned  by  work  as  hired  farm  laborers.  In  Hadley, 
for  instance,  the  Polish  landowners  have  been  recruited, 
not  from  the  neighboring  industrial  centres  where  Poles 
and  other  Slavs  are  numerous,  but  direct  from  Poland, 
the  newcomers  arriving  with  no  money  in  hand,  and 
working  first  for  hire  and  perhaps  later  on  share,-.. 

Sometimes  the  money  to  begin  farming  with  is  earned 
in  industrial  pursuifSTTJ-OW  dten  this  is  done,  it  is 
llliyUUyible  "To"  estimate.  """^Even  in  Hadley  I  was  told 
that  men  did  sometimes  come  from  Pennsylvania  mines 
with  their  savings.  In  Pennsylvania  itself  there  are 
very  interesting  instances  of  this  current  back  to  the 
land.  In  an  anthracite  county  town,  in  1904,  I  had  an 


336        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Among  the 
Slovaks 


instructive  talk  with  a  real  estate  dealer  whose  signboard 
(except  the  name)  I  copy. 

''George  Smith  spredava  loti  (lots),  hauzi  (houses), 
farmi  (farms)  za  hotove  penezi.  One  (office)  jeto  pod 
-no.  17  J  na  West  Broad  strice  (street)." 

The  words  in  parentheses  I  have  inserted  to  mark  the 
English  words  which  have  been  adopted  in  a  more  or  less 
Slavonized  form.  My  informant  said:  "Today  the 
Americans  are  leaving  the  farms  for  the  cities  and 
factories;  the  farms  are  ruined  by  the  factories  making 
it  impossible  to  get  servants.  The  Slavs  are  the  people 
who  take  to  farming.  The  movement  has  been  going  on 
only  for  the  last  five  or  six  years,  but  if  it  continues  at 
the  present  rate,  they  will  be  in  the  majority  in  the 
farming  districts  in  this  neighborhood.  A  Slav  miner 
will  save  $1000  to  $2500,  seldom  more.  This  would  give 
him  a  farm  of  perhaps  50  to  75  acres  with  a  house. 
If  he  had  only  $1000  he  could  still  buy  10  or  12  acres 
with  a  little  house.  They  make  good  farmers.  They 
raise  more  hay  and  less  'truck'  and  stock  than  the 
Italians.  They  are  much  cleaner.  The  nationalities 
represented  are  chiefly  Slovaks,  Magyars  and  Poles,  with 
some  Russian  Jews." 

Not  only  in  Pennsylvania  but  scattered  here  and  there 
in  other  states,  one  comes  across  larger  or  smaller  num 
bers  thus  graduating  from  industry  to  the  farm.* 

Several  of  the  minor  nationalities,  though  they  have 
far  fewer  representatives  in  agriculture  than  have  the 
Poles  and  Bohemians,  have  farming  settlements  that  are 
very  interesting  and  many  of  these  were  made  as  a  re 
sult  of  American  savings.  Of  the  Slovaks,  one  of  their 
leaders,  Mr.  Rovnianek,  wrote  in  1904: 

"At  first  there  was  a  disposition  among  them  to  return 
to  their  native  country,  but  in  a  little  while  some  decided 
to  stay.  .-Then  it  was  that  they  began  to  look  around 
them  for  opportunities  to  settle  on  farms  and  return  to 
the  manner  of  life  which  they  had  led  at  home.  There 
*  Cf.  the  Radom  settlement  mentioned  in  note,  page  324. 


SLOVAK  WOMEN  AT  ELLIS  ISLAND 


Photograph  by  Mine 


Photograph  by  Hine 


A  SLOVAK  FAMILY  BOUND  FOR  THE  WEST 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  337 

are  now  hundreds  of  Slovak  farmers  in  Pennsylvania, 
Connecticut  and  Ohio;  and  in  Minnesota,  Arkansas, 
Virginia  and  Wisconsin  there  are  colonies  of  them  where 
for  miles  on  every  side  the  land  is  entirely  in  their  pos 
session.  It  would  scarcely  be  possible  to  name  a  state 
in  the  Union  where  a  few  Slovaks  have  not  settled  and 
obtained  farms  which  they  own,  having  bought  them 
with  money  earned  previously  during  the  time  of  their 
employment  in  the  industrial  centres."* 

'  Father  Stephen  Furdek  of  Cleveland,  who  perhaps 
knows  the  Slovak  situation  as  well  as  any  one,  is  of  the 
opinion  that  when  they  get  a  little  money  and  a  little 
more  independent  spirit  they  will  turn  to  farming  quite 
generally. 

One  of  the  interesting  Slovak  farm  settlements  is  A  Slovak 
a  place  called  Slovaktown,  near  Stuttgart,  Arkansas,  of 
which  the  Rev.  J.  v.  McQuaid  writes  me,f  "There  are 
25QjSlovaks,.  50  families,  most  of  them  Roman  Catholic 
and  a  few  Lutheran.  All  own  farms,  some  have  40 
acres,  some  80,  some  more.  A  few  young  men  work  for 
wages  away  from  home;  otherwise  they  are  employed 
on  their  own  land.  They  were  born  in  the  old  country, 
but  came  to  Slovaktown  mostly  from  Pennsylvania  and 
Illinois,  where  they  had  worked  in  mines  and  factories 
and  on  railroads.  When  they  had  saved  enough  money 
to  pay  for  40  acres,  they  would  buy  from  the  Slovak 
Colonization  Company  of  Pittsburgh,  but  the  land  being 
wild  and  unimproved  they  would  stay  on  at  their  old 
jobs  till  they  had  saved  enough  more  money  to  afford  to 
fence  the  land  and  build  temporary  homes.  Some  had 
only  $20  or  $25  to  start  with,  after  the  land  was  paid  for, 
and  yet  they  have  succeeded  well.  They  own  the  land 
clear,  with  no  mortgages.  The  chief  crops  are  corn, 
oats,  hay^ fruits  and  vegetables,  besides  milk  for  the 
creamery.  They  are  better  farmers  than  any  other 

*  Rovnianek,  P.  V. :  "The  Slovaks  in  America."  Charities, 
XIII,  pages  239-244  (Dec.  3,  1904). 

t  This  is  not  given  verbatim,  but  condensed  from  Father 
McQuaid's  letter. 


338        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Croatian  s 

buying 

farms 


Ruthenians 
go  to 
Canada 


nationality.  They  have  comfortable,  tidy  houses,  sur 
rounded  by  fruit  trees  and  rich  gardens;  they  have 
barns,  and  live  stock  such  as  cows,  horses,  mules  and 
hogs.  They  live  and  dress  well,  and  instead  of  having 
to  buy  meat,  potatoes,  sauerkraut,  corn  and  the  other 
things  that  should  abound  on  a  farm,  but  not  always 
do,  they  generally  have  some  to  sell.  The  children  go 
to  the  American  public  schools,  of  which  there  are  two 
in  their  neighborhood.  They  learn  to  read  and  write 
both  English  and  Slovak,  the  former  at  school,  the  latter 
at  home  from  their  parents.  They  are  on  excellent  terms 
with  their  American  neighbors,  who  respect  as  well  as 
like  them.  They  are  industrious,  honest,  of  steady 
habits,  intelligent  and  able-bodied.  They  love  peace 
and  home.  Five  are  school  directors  and  one  is  a  road 
overseer." 

This  is  certainly  a  cheering  account. 

Among  the  Croatians  there  are  also  instances  ,of 
settling  in-the  country  after  saving  money  at  other  work 
irat  America.  For  instance,  in  the  copper  mining  town 
of  Cf'lumet,  Michigan.  I  was  told  of  a  movement  begin 
ning  among  the  Croatians  there  to  buy  farms  in  the  South 
and  elsewhere.  Ten  or  fifteen  families,  with  savings  of 
$1000  or  $2000  each,  had  gone  to  Georgia.  One  man 
went  to  Minnesota,  where  he  paid  $1500  for  his  land. 
Three  or  four  families  went  to  Canada.  "They  have 
spent  $35,000  on  their  church  in  Calumet,  but  in  ten 
years  they  will  all  be  gone  and  will  be  farming,"  said  my 
informant. 

I  was  also  told  (what  I  have  not  verified),  that  their 
colony  in  Chicago  had  been  5000  or  6000  strong  a  few 
years  before,  but  had  in  1906  dwindled  to  1000  or  1500, 
as  a  result  of  the  numbers  that  had  distributed  them 
selves  thence — many  to  mines  and  factories,  but  many 
also  to  farms. 

As  we  had  already  learned  in  Europe,  Ruthenians  who 
come  meaning  to  farm  generally  go  directly  to  Canada. 
But  many  also  save  money  from  their  earnings  in  the 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  339 

United  States  and  then  go  to  Canada  with  it,  as  was  done 
by  the  Ruthenian  whose  story  is  told  on  page  352  below. 
In  Canada,  settlers  can  get  a  "  quarter  section"  on  home 
stead  terms  and  keep  what  money  they  have  as  free 
capital.  Galicians  (Ruthenians)  are  said  to  succeed 
better  than  any  other  immigrants  in  Canada,  to  be  "all 
over  the  country,"  and  as  numerous  in  Canada  as  in  the 
United  States.*  In  the  United  States  also  they  have 
some  farming  settlements,  but  apparently  not  any  con 
siderable  number.  I  was  told  of  a  settlement  in  Royal- 
ton,  Minnesota,  made  up  of  men  nearly  all  of  whom  had 
worked  for  five  or  six  years  in  Minneapolis,  and  saved 
perhaps  $500  to  $1500.  Some  have  log  houses,  some 
ordinary  frame  houses, — "the  only  thing  that  costs 
money  is  the  glass."  Another  Minnesota  settlement  was 
made  by  men  from  McKees  Rocks  near  Pittsburgh. 

The  Slovenians'  chief  farming  colony  seems  to  be  that  Slovenian 
at   Brockway,   Minnesota,   near   Saint   Cloud,   but  this       n 
apparently  does  not  belong  in  the  class  of  agricultural 
settlement  succeeding  an  industrial  phase.     This  colony 
dates  back  fifty  years.     I  understand  that  one  of.,  their 

Roman  Catholic  missionaries  to  the  Indians  brought  over 

f 

*  Some  interesting  articles  on  Galicians  in  the  Canadian  North 
west  appeared  in  the  Boston  Transcript  in  1905.  The  following 
passage  from  the  first  of  these,  under  date  of  October  zyth, 
seems  worth  quoting: 

"  Here  they  have  quite  overcome  the  prejudice  at  first  aroused 
among  Canadian-American  people,  by  their  sheepskin  costume, 
strange  tongue  and  devotion  to  the  various  Greek  churches. 
They  have  'made. good.'  It  is  hard  to  see  how  the  Alberta 
townspeople  of  other  races  could  get  along  without  them. 
Their  daughters  wait  on  the  public  tables  alertly  and  mannerly. 
They  are  the  hotel  chambermaids.  Housewives  depend  on 
them  and  are  well  rewarded  for  teaching  them  how.  At  country 
stopping-places  Galician  men  are  hostlers  and  bartenders  at 
once.  They  labor  on  the  railways  and  roads.  Not  even  Yankees 
are  of  more  adventurous  and  individualistic  spirit.  They  have 
initiative,  as  if  by  blood.  A  Galician  will  join  any  gang  of  any 
nation,  he  alone,  if  he  sees  good  money  to  be  earned  so.  It  is 
because  these  people,  as  seen  in  the  towns,  are  singularly  in 
teresting,  that  one  goes  for  a  long  drive  to  their  farming  settle 
ments,  wishing  to  see  them  at  home,  confer  with  their  teachers 
and  clergy,  get  a  correct  idea  of  their  cabins,  methods  and  whole 
manner  of  life.  As  yet,  at  Fort  Saskatchewan,  we  are  scarcely 
on  the  verge  of  their  main  settlement." 


340        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Advantages 
of  return 
current  to 
the  land 


Skill  of 
Slavic  farm 
ers 


\ 


from  upper  Carniola  a  group  of  his  countrymen,  who 
cleared  the  forest  and  took  up  homesteads.  Even  to 
day  they  are  said,  young  people  and  all,  to  preserve  their 
own  language,  to  its  minute  local  peculiarities.* 
.,  Of  the  return  current  to  the  land  from  the  larger 
centres  it  is  impossible  to  get  any  adequate  measure, 
but  it  certainly  exists,  and  whatever  its  amount,  it  seems 
desirable  on  several  accounts.  As  contrasted  with 
immediate  settlement  on  a  farm  it  brings  the  Slavic 
peasant  into  the  more  isolated  life  of  the  country  after 
he  has  had  a  chance  to  acquire  a  tinge  of  American  ideas 
and  American  standards.  He  has  not  lost  his  thrift 
and  his  splendid  courage  for  work,  or  he  would  not  be 
there ;  and  he  has  had  a  chance  to  learn  something  of  the 
new  country.  Although  the  fact  that  some  of  the  more 
successful  and  energetic  leave  the  city  colonies  may 
deprive  those  colonies  of  possible  leaders,  still  their  going 
away  tends  to  draw  others  after  them  from  the  tenement 
districts  to  the  land. 

Mr.  Commons  is  convinced  that  the  foreign  family  is 
"assimilated"  faster  on  the  farm  than  in  the  city.  Of 
this  I  am  not  sure.  I  remember  that  our  only  population 
of  long  standing  in  the  country  which  still  speaks  a 
foreign  language,  the  "Pennsylvania  Dutch,"  is  emi 
nently  rural;  and  recalling  my  own  observations,  the 
city  life,  in  spite  of  its  foreign  quarters,  seems  to  me  the 
stronger  solvent. 

As  to  the  quality  of  Slavic  farming,  one  naturally 
hears  different  reports.  I  suspect  that  the  American 
often  thinks  the  Pole  or  Bohemian  a  poor  farmer  because 
he  works  on  a  different  plan,  while  the  foreigner,  used  to 
small,  intensive  farming,  thinks  Yankees  slovenly  and 
wasteful.  Especially  when  he  takes  up  old,  worn-out 
farm  lands  in  Virginia  or  Kentucky,  he  has  small  respect 


*  In  Rev.  F.  S.  Sustersic's  guide  for  Slovenians  in  America, 
I  find  Slovenian  farm  settlements  mentioned  in  Iowa,  South 
Dakota,  Idaho,  and  Washington,  besides  Minnesota.  See  also 
above,  pages  233,  269-270. 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  341 


for  the  methods  of  his  predecessor,  who,  he  say^J^j£&£ed\ 
thejsoiL''* 

The  American  business  agent  of  a  Bohemian  farming 
paper,  already  quoted,  could  not  say  enough  in  praise 
of  the  Bohemian  farmers.  They  farmed  better  than  the 
Americans.  They  invested  freely  in  farm  machinery. 
Nothing  was  too  good  or  too  big  for  them.  In  the  eastern 
half  of  Butler  county,  Nebraska,  there  were  seventeen 
big  steam  threshing  outfits  among  Bohemians  —  some 
thing  to  which  you  could  find  nothing  parallel  in  the 
same  area  anywhere  in  the  United  States.  The  Bohe 
mian  paper  of  which  he  was  agent  had  seven  times 
more  advertising  of  farm  implements  than  any  other 
paper  in  the  United  States. 

While  the  above  statements  are  those  of  an  interested 
party,  all  the  available  evidence  points  the  same  way. 
It  would  seem,  moreover,  as  though  in  certain  lines,  new 
to  us  and  familiar  in  Europe,  the  immigrant  should  be 
able  to  supply  very  valuable  skill.  This  seems  to  be 
especially  the  case  in  the  sugar-beet  industry,  in  which 
the  labor  of  Bohemians,  who  understand  beet  culture 
well,  is  much  sought. 

Of  the  financial  success  of  Slavic  farmers  I   see  no  (Standard  of 
reason  to  doubt.     My  inquiry  was  undertaken  in  a  time  1  lvm£ 
of  great  general  prosperity,  and  allowance  must  be  made  1 
for  that  fact.     Certainly  I  ran   across  no   "hard  luck  ' 

*  The    following    Massachusetts    testimony    is    interesting:  f 
"The  Polish  farmer  uses  as  up  to  date  methods  and  implements  j 
as  the  American  does.     The  crops  of  the  Poles  compare  very  / 
favorably  with  those  raised  by  Americans.      In  one  particular  j 
the  Pole  has  taught  the  American  a  lesson.     Before  the  coming  j 
of  the  Poles  to  Sunderland  all  the  farmers  crowded  down  on  to 
the  meadow  land  near  the  river.     The  upper  terraces  were  de-Jr 
serted  because  the  soil  did  not  contain  the  rich  river  loam.     The** 
Poles  came  and  began  working  these  upper  lands  with  which  the  ; 
Yankees  refused  to  have  anything  to  do.     They  have  now  de-fe 
monstrated  clearly  that  the  lighter  soil  is  exactly  as  good  for  to-j^ 
bacco  as  any  other  and  as  a  result  the  terrace  lands  have  risen^f 
tremendously  in    value.     The   Pole's  faith  in  the  light  soil  is  I 
well  justified  by  the  fact  that  tobacco  raised  on  it  was  judged  the 
best  produced  in  Sunderland  last  year."—  Tyler,   E.  T.:"Thel 
Poles    in    the    Connecticut    Valley."     Smith    College    Monthly, 
June,  1909,  page  581. 


342        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Cases  of 
financial 
success 


stories."  The  only  complaints  that  I  heard  were  from 
Americans,  and  they  feared  not  the  failure  of  the 
foreigners  but  the  low  standard  of  living  which  made  for 
their  economic  success. 

"  Where,  as  in  parts  of  the  Connecticut  valley,  there  is  a 
large  drifting  body  of  farm  laborers  of  the  poorest  class 
hired  for  a  few  months  at  a  time,  one  hears  of  drunken 
ness,  cutting  affrays  with  the  police  and  with  one  an 
other,  of  a  low  moral  standard  and  brutish  overcrowding, 
of  dirt,  and  of  low  standards  generally.  Again,  even 
in  this  same  region,  one  hears  the  other  side* — they 
are  clean,  they  Americanize  sooner  than  any  other  na 
tionality,  business  men  would  rather  deal  with  them 
than  with  any  class,  the  elders  drink  less  than  they  did, 
and  the  young  people  much  less  than  their  elders,  and 
they  are  saving  and  gaining  ground  all  the  time.  Prob 
ably  the  most  widespread  contrast  with  American  ways 
is  the  custom  of  women  as  well  as  men  working  in  the 
field.  The  children  work  too,  and  the  foreigner's  great 
advantage  is  that  he  hires  no  labor  and  that  a  big  family 
is  an  advantage,  not  an  expense.  While  this  has  its 
bad  side,  on  the  other  hand  it  facilitates  early  marriages 
and  consequently  rural  morality,  and  the  getting  the 
farmer's  wife  out  of  doors  has  its  hygienic  advantages. 

That  the  standard  of  living  of  foreigners  is  not  higher 
than  it  is,  is  certainly  to  be  regretted.  But  it  is  rising, 
and  meanwhile  a  lower  standard  of  living  in  the  country 
and  among  independent  farmers  does  not  threaten  the 
standard  of  living  of  competitors  in  nearly  as  dangerous  a 
fashion  as  among  industrial  wage  laborers. 

The  large  money  successes  of  which  one  occasionally 
hears  are  apt  to  be  made  on  the  speculative  side  of 
farming.  But  the  strictly  legitimate  acquisition  of 
wealth  in  rich  sections  is  considerable.  A  farm  like  the 
Dalmatian  one  in  California,  spoken  of  above,  is  naturally 

*  See  extracts  from  an  article  entitled  "Absorbing the  Alien," 
Boston  Evening  Transcript,  August  4,  1909.  Appendix  XXIV, 
page  473- 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  343 

a  rarity.  On  the  other  hand,  a  Nebraska  farmer  who  is 
worth  $50,000  or  $75,000  is  by  no  means  a  wonder,  and 
while  the  majority  farm  on  a  smaller  scale,  they  tend  to 
become  a  substantial  class  of  property  owners. 

The  success  of  those  who  do  succeed  advertises  farming 
and  stimulates  ambition.  It  also  tends  to  originate  new 
and  higher  standards  of  living  within  the  foreign  group, 
where  new  refinements  or  comforts  among  their  own 
people  are  far  more  powerfully  suggestive  than  the  same 
things  among  Americans.  When  the  farmer's  son,  and 
sometimes  his  daughter,  goes  to  the  state  university  or  the 
normal  school,  or  otherwise  secures  a  higher  education,  the 
group  acquires  leaders  of  its  own  with  a  broader  outlook. 

But  more  important  than  the  exceptional  successes 
are  the  large  number  of  thrifty  farmers'  families,  poor  but 
"getting  on,"  which  offer  to  the  next  generation  a  fair 
chance  of  education  and  advance. 

THE  TRUE  STORY  OF  A  BOHEMIAN  PIONEER* 
"I  was  a  little  girl  when  we  came  to  America.     My  father  The  journey 
had  been  a  poor  man  in  Bohemia,  and  one  day  a  neighbor,  a   to  Wiscon- 
well-to-do  farmer,  came  to  him  and  said  that  he  wanted  to  go  to  sin 
America  but  that  he  knew  no  German  (which  he  regarded  as 
indispensable  for  the  journey),  and  that  if  my  father,  who  could 
speak  German,  would  come  with  him  and  help  him  he  would  pay 
his  expenses.     So  it  was  arranged  that  way.      We  got  as  far  as 
Manitowoc,  on  the  Wisconsin  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  where  there 
was  a  large  Bohemian  settlement,  and  there  our  farmer  decided 
that  he  could  shift  for  himself  and  left  us.      We  sat  there  on  the 
dock  by  the  lakeside,  my  father,  my  mother,  my  little  brother 
and  myself  without  one  cent  among  us. 

"  Well,  we  got  along  somehow.  I  went  to  school  and  learned 
to  read,  progressing  as  far  as  the  Fourth  Reader,  and  father  saved 
a  little  money.  At  that  time  Nebraska,  which  was  not  admitted 
as  a  state  till  later,  in  1867,  was  attracting  settlers  and  my  father 
decided  to  migrate  from  Wisconsin  to  Nebraska  territory. 

"We  started  in  the  autumn  of  1866  with  a  little  party  of   Removal  to 
Bohemian  families.     I  was  eight  years  old  then  and  my  brother   Nebraska 

*  Reprinted  by  kind  permission  from  the  Chautauquan,  Feb 
ruary,  1908. 


344        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

several  years  younger.  My  father  had  eight  hundred  dollars 
to  make  a  start  with,  and  it  seemed  a  great  deal  to  us,  but  no 
other  of  the  families  had  so  little. 

"We  got  as  far  as  Saint  Joseph  on  the  Missouri  River,  just 
south  of  the  Nebraska  line,  and  there  my  father  was  persuaded 
by  a  blacksmith  with  whom  he  had  made  friends  to  stay  over 
the  winter.  This  was  very  good  advice,  and  if  any  of  the  party 
had  been  more  experienced  they  would  not  have  started  till 
spring  in  the  first  place. 

"So  we  stayed  at  Saint  Joe,  where  the  traces  of  the  war  were 
still  to  be  seen — remnants  of  the  fortifications,  and  chain  and 
other  d6bris  on  the  bank  where  they  had  been  shot  from  across 
the  river.  But  the  other  families  went  on  into  Nebraska  that 
fall  and  got  themselves  established  in  a  provisional  way.  But 
that  was  all  they  could  do;  it  was  too  late  to  start  any  farming 
and  the  men,  all  except  one  cripple,  came  back  and  wintered  at 
Saint  Joe,  where  they  could  get  employment,  leaving  their 
families  on  the  prairies  in  the  sod  houses  with  the  one  crippled 
man. 

"Also,  by  the  blacksmith's  advice,  my  father  bought  a  pair  of 
oxen,  good  ones,  which  proved  to  be  an  excellent  investment 
and  far  more  serviceable  than  the  old  army  horses  that  the  others 
bought.  The  horses  were  cheap,  but  they  turned  out  to  be 
quite  useless ;  they  always  balked  and  finally,  when  we  got  to  our 
destination,  they  ran  away.  Father  also  bought  my  brother 
a  good  little  Indian  pony. 

"When  spring  came  we  started  out  again  and  traveled  some 
weeks.  The  women  and  children  slept  in  the  wagon  and  the 
men  under  .it.  Going  up  hill,  father  would  fasten  the  pony  on 
ahead  of  the  oxen  to  help  them  up. 

"When  we  got  to  the  Blue  River  father  said:  'According 
to  the  map  my  land  should  be  across  there,  as  I  figure  it  out,' 
and  he  was  right.  We  looked  about  for  our  neighbors  but  we 
could  see  nothing.  Then  we  heard  a  cock  crow,  but  still  we 
could  see  no  house,  for  we  were  not  used  to  sod  houses.  At 
last  we  found  a  bridge  of  felled  tree  trunks  leading  across  the 
river  to  our  neighbor's  home. 

Dug-outs  "In  those  days  men  either  built  their  houses  of  sods  piled 

up  on  the  flat  prairie  or  else  made  dug-outs  in  the  bank  of  the 
river.  At  first  we  lived  in  an  old  dug-out  already  made,  later 
we  made  quite  a  nice  one  for  ourselves.  It  was  tall  enough  to 
stand  up  straight  in  and  the  earth  sides  were  whitewashed,  but 
for  some  time  we  had  no  door,  having  nothing  to  make  one  of. 
Once,  that  first  summer,  my  father  had  gone  to  break  some  land 
for  a  neighbor  twelve  miles  away  and  had  taken  my  brother  with 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS 


345 


him  so  that  my  mother  and  I  were  left  alone  and  there  came  up  a 
fearful  storm.  That  was  while  we  still  had  no  door.  In  those 
days  when  you  were  driving  across  the  prairie  in  the  dark,  you 
had  to  be  careful  not  to  break  through  into  people's  dug-outs. 
Heavy  rains  made  trouble.  Water  would  leak  in  and  sometimes 
rats  and  snakes  would  come  through.  As  soon  as  they  could 
the  settlers  would  get  into  houses  made  of  logs  plastered  with 
mud. 

"Our  oxen  proved  of  the  greatest  advantage  to  us  when  it  Oxen  of 
came  to  'breaking  prairie.'  Horses  were  not  strong  enough  for  great  use 
that  work.  Father  not  only  used  the  oxen  himself,  but  loaned 
them  for  nothing  to  the  neighbors.  In  those  days  all  were  the 
best  of  friends.  It  was  all  for  one  and  one  for  all.  Father  also 
made  money  with  his  oxen,  'breaking  prairie'  for  American  farm 
ers.  When  new  emigrants  came  out,  father  would  go  to  Nebraska 
City,  sixty-four  miles  away,  to  fetch  them  with  his  oxen.  It 
took  him  four  days.  He  had  trained  them  to  run  and  they  went 
fast.  So  in  more  ways  than  one  our  oxen  helped  us  to  get  a 
start.  Later  father  also  broke  steers  for  use  and  this  was 
very  profitable. 

"At  first  there  were  many  kinds  of  hardship.  The  climate  Climate 
was  much  worse  then  than  it  is  now.  In  winter  big  blizzards 
would  come  and  last  a  week ;  now  we  never  have  them  more  than 
a  day  and  night  at  a  time.  In  summer  there  were  hot  winds, 
such  as  we  have  not  had  now  for  years,  and  terrible  droughts. 
In  those  days  there  were  no  trees  except  along  the  banks  of  the 
rivers.  As  the  country  has  got  settled  up  and  trees  planted  all 
about,  and  especially  as  the  prairie  has  been  ploughed  up  and 
cultivated  and  fields  of  alfalfa  sown,  it  has  made  a  great  difference. 
The  hot  winds  are  said  to  start  in  the  prairie  country;  it  just 
breeds  them. 

"One  winter,  I  think  that  it  was  the  first  year,  father  went  to  Snowstorms 
Beatrice,  about  twenty  miles  away,  with  the  yoke  of  oxen  and 
the  wagon  and  nine  bushels  of  wheat.  We  had  had  one  big  fall 
of  snow  before  he  started  but  soon  after  another  big  storm  came 
and  he  was  kept  away  a  week.  He  had  been  afraid  of  what  was 
coming  but  the  neighbors  laughed  at  him.  Mother  was  almost 
wild  when  he  did  not  come  back.  The  snow  was  so  deep  that 
where  the  creek  ordinarily  was  there  was  now  a  hill  of  snow.  She 
went  to  a  neighbor  and  wanted  him  to  go  and  look  for  father, 
but  he  had  no  boots  that  he  could  go  in.  Mother  had  barely 
come  back  to  the  house  to  get  him  a  pair  when  father  got  home 
with  just  the  oxen  and  what  he  called  a  'smick.'  He  brought 
nothing  with  him,  but  he  was  glad  enough  to  get  back  at  all. 
The  oxen  had  refused  to  face  the  storm  (they  never  will)  and  had 
turned  around  and  broken  everything.  So  he  had  come  home 


346        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

as  he  was,  leaving  the  things  in  care  of  a  man  that  he  knew  who 
lived  near  the  place  where  it  happened,  which  was  twelve  miles 
off.  Mother  decided  to  go  back  with  him  to  fetch  what  he  had 
left,  leaving  me  at  home  alone.  Another  storm  came  up  and 
they  could  not  get  back  for  four  days.  I  was  only  nine  years  old. 
After  a  time  I  had  eaten  up  all  the  bread  and  burned  all  the 
wood.  I  had  sense  enough  to  make  my  way  to  the  river  and 
follow  up  on  the  ice  to  a  neighbor's.  A  woman  came  back  with 
me  and  chopped  wood  for  me.  Then  father  and  mother  got 
home.  They  had  been  only  twelve  miles  off  and  had  expected 
to  return  right  away,  but  it  had  been  impossible. 

A  flood  "In  the  spring  when  all  that  snow  came  off  at  once  and  rain 

came  besides  it  made  a  flood.  The  land  was  under  water  for 
miles.  Everybody  had  to  move  out,  up  on  to  a  hill.  The  mills 
could  not  grind  and  there  was  not  enough  to  eat.  We  used  flour 
mixed  with  shorts.  We  gave  away  almost  everything.  Mr.  H., 
a  well-to-do  neighbor,  came  and  borrowed  a  little  corn  meal. 

Famine  "That  summer  we  had  nothing.     The  pony  ran  away  and 

was  gone  seven  weeks.  The  oxen  were  used  to  his  leading  and 
would  not  plough  without  him.  Father  went  to  hunt  for  him 
and  when  he  returned  he  was  so  worn  and  changed  that  we  did 
not  know  him.  We  got  the  pony  back,  but  he  was  ruined  and 
we  sold  him  for  twenty-five  dollars.  We  had  no  money  and 
nothing  to  eat.  We  did  have  plenty  of  clothes;  we  had  brought 
those  with  us.  Many,  who  had  not,  used  sacking.  One  time 
we  had  nothing  but  corn  meal,  not  even  salt,  and  we  could  not 
swallow  it.  Mr.  V.  came  once  and  spent  a  week  with  us.  He 
had  brought  all  sorts  of  things  with  him  and  he  laughed  at  us. 
He  had  raisins  and  prunes  and  so  forth.  Next  year  he  was  in 
the  same  straits  that  we  were.  He  had  spent  all  his  money  and 
no  more  came  in. 

"Now-a-days  settlers  have  a  very  different  experience.  It  is 
not  at  all  so  hard.  They  can  earn  money  and  buy  things  and 
there  are  railroad  facilities.  In  those  days  work  was  often  paid 
for  with  an  order  on  the  store.  In  1868  the  Northwestern  Rail 
road  came  to  Omaha  and  other  lines  soon  came  to  nearby  points, 
but  at  first  there  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  Once  father  carried  a 
bushel  of  corn  for  his  chickens  ten  miles  on  his  back. 

Locusts  "Even  worse  than  the  blizzards  and  floods  were  the  plagues 

of  locusts  which  came  later.  We  had  had  them  in  '69  or  '70 
but  at  that  time  they  were  not  so  bad  here  and  did  not  do  so 
much  damage  as  when  they  came  again.  In  '74  they  were  much 
worse  and  in  '75  they  hatched  here.  They  have  never  been  so 
bad  since.  We  heard  a  sound  and  it  grew  dark  and  we  thought 
that  a  storm  was  coming.  The  sun  was  hidden.  We  thought 
that  it  was  the  end  of  the  world.  Then  they  began  to  come 


SLAVS    AS    FARMERS  347 

down.  In  one  hour  they  had  eaten  everything,  even  the  tobacco. 
They  bent  down  little  trees  with  their  weight.  They  were  so 
thick  on  the  ground  that  when  we  took  a  step  they  were  over 
our  ankles  and  our  feet  made  holes,  like  footprints  in  the  snow. 
The  river  was  covered  with  them  so  that  in  some  places  we  could 
not  see  the  water.  They  would  eat  the  paint  off  a  house  and 
chew  up  lace  curtains.  Sometimes  they  were  so  thick  on  the 
rails  that  they  stopped  the  trains.  The  masses  of  them  in  the 
river  made  a  terrible  smell  afterwards,  but  it  did  not  seem  to 
cause  any  sickness. 

"In  those  days  Indians  used  often  to  come  through.  They  Indians 
were  Omahas  and  Pawnees  and  they  used  to  visit  one  another 
annually,  by  turns.  Sometimes  there  would  be  five  hundred  in 
a  party.  They  went  in  single  file,  five  or  ten  paces  apart,  at  a 
sort  of  little  trot.  It  was  the  government's  orders  that,  to 
avoid  trouble,  they  were  not  to  go  in  a  bunch.  They  would 
gather,  however,  to  camp.  They  would  be  two  or  three  days 
going  through.  Some  traveled  on  foot  but  the  squaws  were 
mostly  on  ponies  with  crossed  sticks  trailing  behind,  with  the 
children  and  goods  loaded  on  the  middle.  The  sticks  were  young 
trees  and  they  were  fastened  with  the  brush  of  their  tops  dragging, 
which  made  them  springy  and  elastic.  The  Indians  then  were 
superior  to  those  that  we  see  now-a-days.  They  looked  livelier 
and  were  better  dressed. 

"Often,  when  you  least  expected  it,  you  would  suddenly 
find  a  big  Indian  standing  beside  you.  Shivers  went  right 
through  a  person.  They  had  a  regular  snaky  walk.  They 
would  come  up  and  ask  for  a  little  flour  or  want  to  swap  some 
thing,  but  they  never  bothered.  They  were  all  right  if  they  were 
treated  right.  Some  people  treated  them  mean  and  would  not 
give  them  anything  so  of  course  they  suffered.  If  an  Indian  got 
mad  or  excited  he  did  not  care  what  he  did.  If  we  gave  one  a 
chicken  we  just  pointed  it  out  in  the  bunch  and  he  shot  it  with 
an  arrow.  Once  my  brother  wanted  a  pretty  whip  that  one  of 
them  had  and  gave  him  a  dog  and  a  pair  of  shoes  for  it.  (A 
dog  the  Indians  would  kill  at  once  and  eat.)  The  Indian  said 
my  brother  could  have  the  whip,  but  that  first  he  wanted  to  carry 
it  with  him  on  his  visit  and  that  he  would  leave  it  on  his  return. 
My  brother  did  not  feel  that  he  could  make  any  objection,  but 
he  did  not  expect  to  see  the  whip  again.  On  the  return  however, 
the  Indian  brought  it. 

"I  grew  up  a  very  strong  girl.     I  did  all  sorts  of  work,  even   Breaking 
to  breaking  prairie,  which  is  hard  work  for  a  man.     Once  I  was   prairie 
ploughing  with  the  girl  that  my  brother  married.     I  was  manag 
ing  the  oxen  while  she  held  the  plough.     After  a  time  she  said 
that  it  was  too  hard  work,  she  could  not  hold  the  plough  into  the 


348        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Reading 
Bohemian 


Today 


soil.  So  we  changed  work,  but  she  was  not  used  to  the  oxen 
and  said  gee  when  she  should  have  said  haw  and  they  broke  and 
ran.  After  that  she  held  the  plough.  Another  time  she  wanted 
to  ride  the  mare.  I  told  her  that  she  did  not  know  how,  but  she 
insisted  and  was  thrown  and  a  good  deal  hurt. 

"Two  separate  times  I  was  bitten  by  a  rattlesnake.  There 
was  no  doctor  and  we  did  what  we  could.  It  was  a  week  before 
I  could  put  my  foot  to  the  ground. 

"I  do  not  know  why  my  father  never  taught  me  to  read  Bo 
hemian.  In  the  evenings  he  used  to  read  aloud  to  us  in  Bohe 
mian  and  I  knew  my  English  reader  almost  by  heart.  But  it 
was  not  till  after  my  marriage  that  I  taught  myself  to  read 
Bohemian.  It  was  not  difficult,  as  I  could  speak  it  and  the 
spelling  is  perfectly  regular  when  once  you  understand  the  system. 
After  my  marriage  I  was  delicate  for  a  time.  I  suffered  from  my 
early  overwork  and  exposure.  I  had  leisure  and  read  much  in 
English  and  Bohemian." 

This,  as  nearly  as  I  can  repeat  it,  is  the  story  told  me  in  the 
soft  twilight  of  a  recent  Fourth  of  July  by  my  Bohemian  hostess 
in  a  Nebraska  county  town.  Out  on  the  lawn  her  son  was 
setting  off  fireworks  to  amuse  an  adopted  grandchild.  In 
doors  her  husband,  also  a  Bohemian,  the  well-to-do  owner  of 
grist  mills  on  the  near-by  river  which  had  figured  in  her  story, 
was  reading  his  paper.  Everything  spoke  of  peace  and  plenty 
and  I  wondered  what  it  must  feel  like  to  have  seen  such  changes 
and  to  have  been  oneself  so  active  an  instrument  in  bringing 
about  the  development  from  prairie  wilderness  to  tamed  and 
civilized  settlement. 


ig  our/Wome 

:ial   in-   vaTua6! 
women! 


CHAPTER  XVI 
HOUSEHOLD  LIFE* 

Women  are  for  the  most  part  so  scarce  among  our /Women 
Slavic  colonies  that  they  do  not  present  a  special 
dustrial  problem.  As  yet  more  men  than  women 
immigrate.  Among  the  Slavic  immigrants  of  1906,  for 
instance,  the  women  were  only  about  one-third  of  the 
men,  and  among  those  nationalities  which  have  most 
recently  begun  to  come  to  us,  the  Bulgarians,  Servians 
and  Montenegrins,  there/was  not  one  woman  to  twenty- 
five  men.  Of  coursX^nany  of  these  immigrants  are 
leaving  wives  in  Europe,  yet  there  is  a  great  excess  of 
unmarried  men, f  and  since  they  seldom  marry  outside 
of  their  own  national  group,  wives  are  much  in  demand. 
Consequently  the  girls  very  generally  marry  upon  their  ' 
arrival  in  America,  or  as  soon  as  they  are  old  enough,  I 
though  some  work  a  few  years  before  they  marry. 

Women  have  indeed  not  only  a  scarcity  value  as  wives,   Taking 
but  considerable  economic  importance.     The  man  who  is  boarders 
so  fortunate  as  to  be  married  can  take  boarders  and 
lodgers   from   among   his    own    countrymen,    and   thus 
perhaps  double  the  family  income,  besides  gaining  in 
social  importance  as  a  "boarding  boss."     It  is,  however, 
not  only  the  desire  to  make  money  which  leads  the  Slav, 
who  loves  privacy  in  his  family  life,  thus  to  open  his 
house.     He  feels  that  the  young  relative  or  the  neighbor's 
son  has  a  personal  claim,  and  it  is  often  more  as  a  matter 

*  The  best  and  fullest  treatment  of  the  various  subjects  dis 
cussed  in  this  chapter  will  be  found  in  Dr.  Roberts'  "Anthracite 
Coal  Communities."  . 

t  The  Carniolan  figures  seem  to  show  nearly  twice  as  many 
single  as  married  men.  Appendix  XII,  page  451 

Miss  Byington  reports  300  Bulgarians  in  West  Homestead 
among  whom  were  only  three  women.  Charities  and  the  Com 
mons,  XXI,  page  916  (Feb.  6,  1909). 

349 


350        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  kindness  than  of  business  that  he  makes  room  for  him. 
Where  else  should  the  poor  lad  go?  he  thinks.  He  has 
neither  money  nor  work  nor  serviceable  speech.  Very 
likely  the  price  of  his  ticket  has  been  already  advanced, 
and  it  is  the  part  of  prudence  as  well  as  of  kindness  not 
to  let  him  run  up  bills  to  strangers.  He  must  be  shel 
tered,  fitted  out  with  clothes  less  eloquent  of  the  green 
newcomer,  and  above  all  he  must  be  helped  to  a  job. 
Under  these  varied  inducements  married  couples  are  apt 
to  have  their  houses  full,  and  too  often  more  than  full. 

Not  wholly         This  situation  has  both  its  good  and  its  bad  sides. 

an  evil  Americans  see  the  overcrowding  and  the  occasional  rows, 

and  are  perhaps  scandalized  at  the  presence  of  one  woman 
in  a  house  full  of  men.  They  do  not  realize  that  for  a 
young  fellow  to  camp  with  a  number  of  others  in  one 
room  in  the  house  of  some  relative  or  acquaintance  may 
be  not  demoralizing  but  a  safeguard.  It  is  indeed  fair 
to  construe  much  of  the  poorest,  most  crowded  living  ,as 
a  temporary  " roughing  it"  on  the  part  of  men  who  have 
gone  out  to  seek  their  fortunes;  as  something  intended 
only  as  a  transition  arrangement,  just  as  our  own 
eastern  college  boys  are  content  for  a  time  with  rough 
living  in  the  far  West.  It  does  not  represent  their 
standard  of  living  in  the  sense  of  what  would  content 
them  permanently. 

Cooking  ar-       Sometimes  the  men  pay  only  for  a  sleeping  place; 

rangements  sometimes  they  are  regular  boarders.  In  a  Colorado 
mining  camp  $10  a  month  is  a  usual  price  in  the  latter 
case.  Another  arrangement  that  is  very  common  is 
for  the  men  to  pay  a  certain  sum  (perhaps  $2.00  a  month, 
perhaps  $4.00),  for  lodging,  washing  and  cooking,  and 
to  buy  their  own  food.  A  singular  custom  that  one  hears 
of  over  and  over  again,  and  which  seems  to  be  peculiar 
to  the  Slavs,  is  for  the  men  to  buy,  or  get  the  woman  to 
buy  for  them,  each  his  own  separate  daily  supply  of 
food.*  If  a  woman  has  fifteen  boarders  she  may  have 

*  Miss  Byington,  writing  of  a  Bulgarian  boarding  house  in 
Homestead,  Pa.,  says:     "The  financial  arrangements  of  such  an 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  351 

the  butcher  cut  off  and  weigh  fifteen  pieces  of  meat,  and 
the  men  may  sit  down  to  supper  together,  each  with 
his  own  separately  cooked  piece  before  him.  A  still 
stranger  arrangement  which  sometimes  occurs  in  the 
coal  mining  camps  is  for  the  contract  to  include  the 
services  of  the  woman,  not  only  in  having  ready,  against 
the  return  from  work,  a  tub  of  hot  water  for  the  abso 
lutely  necessary  daily  bath  (which  makes  the  dirty  look 
ing  coal  miner  one  of  the  cleanest  of  workingmen)  but 
in  lending  her  motherly  help  in  the  bathing  operation 
itself.  She  comes  in  and  scrubs  the  grime  off  the  miner's 
shoulders  where  he  cannot  get  at  it! 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  necessities  of  the  situation  Objections 
often  seem  so  well  met  by  families  taking  boarders,  there 
are  grave  objections  to  the  custom,  as  tending  to  result 


to  boarders 
in  the 
family 


in  overcrowding  and  in  a  lowering  of  the  tone  of  family 
life,  which  make  it  one  of  the  main  objects  of  American 
criticism.  The  people  chiefly  concerned  are  quite 
conscious  of  all  this,  and  as  the  family  prospers  and  the 
children  begin  to  grow  up,  they  show  happily  a  very 
strong  tendency  to  abandon  this  source  of  income.  A 
Slovak  priest  in  New  York  gave  me  an  interesting  ac 
count  of  his  observations: 

"In  the  far  West  the  women  often  make  $80  a  month,   Evidences 
with  ten  or  fifteen  boarders.     That  is  as  much  as  the  standards 
man  makes.     Yet  when  the  children  get  to  be  five  or 
six  years  old,  the  parents  .leave  the  mining  or  factory 
settlement  where  there.-,  are  no  chances  for  education, 
and  come  to  the  city  where  there  are  schools  and  kinder 
gartens.     There  the  man  earns  only  $1.50  a  day  in  a 
factory,  and  the  wife  stays  at  home  and  earns  nothing. 

establishment  are  simple.  The  boarding  boss  runs  the  house,  and 
the  men  pay  him  three  dollars  a  month  for  a  place  to  sleep,  for 
having  their  clothes  washed  and  their  food  cooked.  In  addition, 
an  account  is  kept  of  the  food  purchased,  and  the  total  is  divided 
among  the  men  at  each  pay-day.  The  housewife  purchases  and 
cooks  what  special  food  each  man  chooses  to  order:  beef,  pork, 
lamb,  each  with  a  tag  of  some  sort,  labeling  the  order,  and  all  fry 
ing  together.  A  separate  statement  is  kept  of  these  expenses  for 
each  boarder." — Byington,  Margaret  F.:  "The  Mill  Town  Courts 
and  their  Lodgers."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  page  919 
(Feb.  6,  1909). 


352        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


A  mission 
ary's  story 


In  New  York  city  she  seldom  takes  boarders — at  most 
a  relative  or  two.  Most  women  have  a  child  almost 
every  year,  and  by  the  time  the  eldest  child  is  six  there 
are  enough  little  ones  to  keep  the  mother  busy.  The 
Slovaks  do  not  want  to  farm,  for  the  American  agri 
cultural  system  is  not  suitable.  They  are  used  to  living 
in  farm  villages,  not  on  scattered  farms;*  they  have 
large  families,  and  on  a  farm  the  children  cannot  go  to 
school.  Many  did  go  into  farming,  but  returned  to  the 
city  on  account  of  the  education  of  the  children." 

The  taking  of  boarders  seems  indeed  to  be  a  transition 
phase,  both  for  individual  families  and  in  general, 
decreasing  as  the  balance  of  the  sexes  in  this  country 
becomes  more  normal. 

Interesting  in  this  connection  was  the  story  told  me 
by  a  Protestant  missionary  in  one  of  the  most  neglected 
factory  slums  that  it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to  see.  A 
Ruthenian  who  had  been  coming  to  his  services  told 
him  one  evening  that  there  had  been  a  christening  at  his 
home  the  day  before,  that  "the  evil  had  conquered  him" 
and  there  had  been  drinking;  but  it  was  the  last  time 
that  liquor  should  come  into  his  house.  He  notified 
the  eighteen  boarders,  who,  in  day  and  night  shifts, 
occupied  the  two  upstairs  rooms  of  his  little  house,  of 
his  ultimatum ;  they  might  of  course  go  to  the  saloon, 
but  if  they  stayed  on  with  him,  they  must  bring  no  drink 
home.  Some  left,  most  remained.  The  man  himself 
soon  after  joined  the  church,  and  later,  through  his 
influence,  sixteen  of  the  eighteen  boarders  did  likewise. 
A  little  later  he  came  one  day  to  the  minister  and  asked 
him  if  he  thought  it  would  do  to  take  fewer  boarders; 
his  wife  had  no  time  to  go  to  church.  The  minister 
naturally  encouraged  him  to  do  so,  and  he  cut  the  number 
down  by  successive  reductions  to  four  men,  trying  to 
give  his  wife  more  time  so  that  he  could  teach  her  to 
read.  Finally  he  said  that  he  wanted  to  live  like  the 
Americans,  with  no  boarders  and  a  parlor  ''where  no 

*On  this  point  see  above,  page  318. 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE 


353 


one  slept."  This,  too,  was  accomplished,  and  the  man  and 
his  wife  and  little  children  occupied  a  three-room  house, 
with  no  outsiders.  But  at  this  point  in  his  career  he 
had  saved  money  enough  to  go  to  farming  (if  I  remember 
rightly,  $3000),  and  like  most  Ruthenians  who  go  into 
farming  he  moved  to  Canada. 

In  spite  of  the  state  of  the  marriage  market,  the  number 
of  Slavic  women  who  work  for  wages  is  absolutely,  if  not 
relatively,  a  large  one.  The  census  showed  among  women 
whose  parents  were  natives  of  Austria,  Bohemia,  Hun 
gary,  Poland  and  Russia,  145,292  gainfully  occupied,  of 
whom  36,000  were  servants  and  waitresses  alone. 

I  give  the  following  census  data  for  what  they  are 
worth.  The  presence  of  Hebrew  and  other  non-Slavic 
elements  lessens  their  significance  for  our  purposes. 

TABLE  26.— FEMALES  OF  SPECIFIED  PARENTAGE  EN 
GAGED  IN  GAINFUL  OCCUPATIONS 


|W( 
rwa 


omen 
age- 
/ earners 


1 


PERCENTAGE  OF 

PERCENTAGE  OF 

COUNTRY  OF  BIRTH 

ABSOLUTE 

ALL  FEMALES  OF 

ALL  OCCUPIED 

OF  PARENTS 

NUMBERS 

SAME  PARENT 

MALES  OF  SAME 

AGE 

PARENTAGE 

Hungary  

14,631 

i  c.7 

16.0 

Bohemia  

25,710 

14.6 

2?   O 

Austria  

25'59° 

13-9 

15.0 

Russia  

4.0  8  1  6 

12.7 

2O  O 

Poland  

38.536 

12.3 

18.0 

Compare  with  these  data  the  following  : 


COUNTRY  OF  BIRTH 
OF  PARENTS 

ABSOLUTE 
NUMBERS 

PERCENTAGE  OF 
ALL  FEMALES  OF 
SAME  PARENT 
AGE 

PERCENTAGE  OF 
ALL  OCCUPIED 
MALES  OF  SAME 
PARENTAGE 

Ireland  

634,201 

24.8 

3^.0 

Canada,  French  

78,070 

20.  1 

30.0 

Germany  

5  38,102 

14.1 

20.  o 

Italy 

26  oo  3 

8  o 

90 

Total  of  native  parentage  . 
Total  of  foreign  parentage 

3,247,907 
2,071,490 

13.2 
16.5 

22.  0 
23.0 

Based  on  Table  Ixxii,  Volume  on  Occupations,  United  States 
Census,  1900. 
23 


354        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

TABLE  27.— LEADING  OCCUPATIONS  FOR  FEMALES  OF 
EACH  SPECIFIED  PARENTAGE.  ABSOLUTE  NUM 
BERS  AND  PERCENTAGES  OF  ALL  FEMALE  WORK 
ERS  OF  THE  GIVEN  PARENTAGE 

Hungary:                                                               NUMBER  PER  CENT 

Servants  and  waitresses 6087  41.6 

Textile  mill  operatives 1350  9.2 

Bohemia: 

Servants  and  waitresses 6316  24.6 

Tailoresses 3468  13.5 

Tobacco  and  cigar  factory  operatives .  3367  13.1 

Austria : 

Servants  and  waitresses 8909  34.8 

Tailoresses 1613  6.3 

Seamstresses *579  6.2 

Dressmakers 1534  6.0 

Poland: 

Servants  and  waitresses 8815  22.9 

Textile  mill  operatives 5793  J4-9 

Tailoresses 3291  8.5 

Tobacco  and  cigar  factory  operatives  .2224  5.8 

Russia: 

Tailoresses 6256  15.3 

Servants  and  waitresses 5853  14.3 

Seamstresses 54*9  *3-3 

Dressmakers 3014  7.4 

Volume  on  Occupations,  U.  S.  Census,  1900,  pages  ccxi-ccxii, 
and  ccvii. 

In  house-  The  wages  of  such  girls  engaged  in  housework  vary, 

holds  Of  course,  from  place  to  place.     In  Hadley,  Massachu 

setts,  $3.00  a  week  seemed  to  be  a  medium  rate,  "per 
haps  $2.00  to  $2.50  for  a  quite  green  girl;    at  any  rate, 
not  over  $3.50  for  general  housework."     In  Jersey  City 
a  Ruthenian  agency  was  placing  wholly  green  girls  at 
$8.00  a  month,  and  those  with  some  experience  at  $15 
and  $16.     I  have  generally  found  that  housekeepers  who 
f  have  had  Slavic  girls  give  them  enthusiastic  praise  as 
{    very  clean,  very  hard-working,  and  devotedly  loyal  to 
the  family.     Of  course  one  also  hears  complaints,  but  it 
is  fair  to  consider  that  language  is  in  this  case  much  more 
of  a  barrier  than  with  German  or  even  Scandinavian 
girls.* 
In  factories        The  number  of  Slavic  women  working  in  shops  and 

*  An  amusing  and  sympathetic  little  story  of  a  Polish  girl  in 
housework  is  "A  Bright  Green  Pole,"  by  Alice  Ward  Bailey. 
The  Outlook,  Feb.  6,  1904. 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  355 

factories  is  also  large.  These  are  mainly,  I  think, 
unmarried  girls,  but  the  Bohemian  families  in  New  York 
city  and  elsewhere  have,  as  is  shown  later,  the  reputation 
of  sending  their  wives  and  mothers  into  tailoring  and 
cigar-making  shops  to  an  excessive  degree.  The  kinds 
of  work  at  which  Slavic  women  are  engaged  of  course 
vary  greatly,  from  that  in  a  Cleveland  hardware  factory, 
where  Slovenian  girls  are  engaged  in  handling  iron  parts 
of  considerable  weight,*  to  the  other  extreme  of  the  finest 
of  lace  work  and  embroidery  for  fashionable  New  York 
dressmakers,  in  which  Bohemian  and  Slovak  girls  find 
their  old-world  handicraft  in  modified  shape  standing 
them  in  stead  here.  From  a  purely  aesthetic  point  of 
view,  no  one  need  wish  to  see  a  prettier  sight  than  a 
Passaic  handkerchief  factory  full  of  Polish  girls  in  ker 
chiefs  of  pale  yellow  and  other  soft  colors,  the  afternoon 
sun  slanting  across  the  fine  stuff  on  which  they  were 
working.  Others  Wo^k  in  Yonkers  factories,  where  the 
preparation  of  rabbit  s&ins  is  as  offensive  to  every  sense 
as  it  is  destructive  to  the  lungs;  others  again  pack 
fuses  in  Connecticut  works,  in  imminent  risk  of  explo 
sions.  Large  numbers,  especially  of  Poles,  are  in  the 
textile  mills  of  Massachusetts,  and  so  on  through  an 
endless  variety  of  occupations,  down  to  the  women  in  a 
mining  settlement  who  take  in  washing  as  their  family 
cares  allow. 

For  a  more  detailed  study  of  Slavic  working  women  I 
refer  the  reader  to  Miss  Butler's  "Women  and  the 
Trades,"  a  study  of  working  conditions  in  Pittsburgh. 
She  finds  the  American  and  German  girls  turning  over 
the  inferior  and  unpleasant  work  to  newcomers  from 
Poland  and  Russia,  and  "these  same  newcomers,  some 
times  by  sheer  physical  strength,  sometimes  by  personal 
indifference  and  a  low  standard,  are  found  competing  on 
the  basis  of  lower  wages  with  men.  Work  that  would  other - 

*  Miss  Butler  found,  in  and  about  Pittsburgh,  1954  women  in 
metal  work,  two-thirds  of  them  Polish  and  Croatian,  some  of 
whom  were  doing  extremely  heavy  work.  Butler,  Elizabeth 
Beardsley:  "Women  and  the  Trades,"  page  228. 


356        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

wise  never  have  been  given  to  girls  to  do,  has  come  into  the 
hands  of  Polish  women."*  "A  determination  to  work 
and  earn  is  uppermost.  Marriage  is  not  suffered  to 
,  act  as  a  hindrance."  "These  women  have  the  same 
.reputation  as  have  their  men-folk  for  willingness  to  work 
hard  and  put  up  with  poor  conditions."  .  .  .  "They 
are  in  the  factory,"  says  Miss  Butler  significantly,  "too 
much  on  sufferance  for  grievances  to  be  worth  their  while.'' 
This  I  am  convinced  is  the  real  meaning  of  much  of 
their  supposed  indifference  to  "unpleasant"  conditions. 
Another  part  of  the  explanation  of  such  conditions  is 
elsewhere  noted  by  Miss  Butler,  who  says  that  work 
rooms  that  would  not  long  be  tolerated  by  Americans — 
employers  or  the  general  public — have  been  regarded 
with  indifference  when  occupied  by  immigrant  workers 
"perhaps  because  of  inability  to  share  the  sensations  of  a 
foreigner. ' ' 

"The  Polish  women  have  not  the  conservatism  which 
keeps  the  Italian  girl  at  home;  they  have  not  the  same 
standard  of  close  knit  family  relationship,"  is  an  observa 
tion  of  Miss  Butler's  which  I  am  inclined  to  question. 
I  think  it  is  not  that  the  family  is  less  closely  knit,  but 
that  custom  does  not  impose  on  Polish  girls  the  seclusion 
that  Italians  regard  as  incumbent  on  their  girls  and  which 
makes  it  improper  for  Italian  girls  to  attend,  for  instance, 
any  evening  classes  at  a  settlement,  (as  all  other  national 
ities  freely  do),  or  in  general  to  move  about  unchaperoned 
on  pain  of  loss  to  the  family  reputation. 

"The  Polish  women,"  according  to  Miss  Butler, 
"have  pushed  their  way  into  a  wider  circle  of  industries 
than  have  the  Jewish  girls,"  which  seems  surprising, 
but  in  these  various  industries  they  "are  limited  by  lack 
of  training  and  by  trade  indifference,  as  well  as  by  the 
stolid  physical  poise  that  cannot  be  speeded  at  the  high 
pressure  to  which  an  American  girl  will  respond.  They 
have  not  an  industrial  standard  that  would  tend  to 

*  Miss  Butler  seems  to  use  the  term  Polish  to  roughly  desig 
nate  the  Slavic  group.  The  italics  in  these  quotations  are  mine. 


be. 

ric 

y- 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  357 

react  progressively  upon  the  character  of  their  work  and 
the  arrangement  of  the  workrooms.  They  accept  posi 
tions  that  girls  of  other  races  regard  as  socially  infe 
rior.  They  consent  to  do  .  .  .  the  work  that  leads 
and  can  lead  to  nothing  except  coarsening  of  fibre 
and  a  final  break  in  strength."  Here  we  meet  again  the 
constantly  recurring  note  of  the  destruction  of  Slavic 
workpeople  by  the  conditions  of  their  American  employ 
ment. 

The  Polish  working  women  are,  however,  not  all  of 
this  stolid  make  and  in  this  lowest  grade  of  employment. 
In  canneries  and  cracker  factories  Miss  Butler  found 
"Polish  girls  who  are  lighter  handed,  fairer,  more  deli 
cately  built.  .  .  .  These  girls  have  rapid  work  to  do. 
They  have  the  nervous  energy  to  pack  or  to  fill  cans  at 
high  speed,  .  .  .  the  quickness  that  can  be  spurred 
higher  and  higher  to  the  breaking  point;  who  can  in 
two  years  or  three  be  worked  out  and  thrown  aside." 

Of  special  historical  interest  is  the  part  played  in  Cigar 
the  New- -York  cigar  making  industry  by  Bohemian  r 
women,  Dr.  Abbott*  says  that  they  began  to  emigrate 
in  1869.  I  have  often  been  told  of  an  exodus  to  this 
country  of  women  cigar  makers,  following  a  strike 
in  tobacco  factories  of  the  Bohemian  government  in 
Kutna  Hora  (Kuttenberg)  in  the  seventies. f  It  is  said 
that  "five  or  six  wives  would  come  over  together,  work 
at  cigar  making  as  they  did  in  Bohemia,  and  send  money 
back  for  their  husbands'  passage."  "In  Bohemia  the 
men  had  worked  only  in  the  fields,  and  their  wives  taught 

*  See  the  excellent  historical  study  of  women  in  cigar  making 
which  makes  Chapter  IX  of  Dr.  Edith  Abbott's  "Women  in  In 
dustry."  The  quotations  are  taken  from  this  source.  See  also 
Miss  Butler's  study,  in  Chapter  V  of  the  book  referred  to  above, 
on  this  industry  in  Pittsburgh. 

t  In  a  visit  to  the  government  tobacco  factory  at  Budweis, 
in  1905,  we  found  all  but  fifty  of  the  employes  women,  two- 
thirds  of  whom,  we  were  told,  were  married.  They  are  given  a 
preliminary  physical  examination,  and  if  accepted  as  sound, 
receive  instruction  for  three  months,  and  are  then  put  on  piece 
rates.  There  are  both  sickness  and  death  benefits  and  dis 
ability  pensions  after  ten  years'  service.  The  work-people  are 
not  organized,  and  are  said  to  be  "very  Catholic." 


358        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Married 
women  in 
the    facto 
ries. 


them,"  after  they  came  over,  the  relatively  unskilled 
work  of  bunch  making,  while  the  women  still  did  the 
more  skilled  and  better  paid  rolling.  "The  entire  united 
family  would  take  up  the  manufacture  of  cigars,  emulat 
ing  the  industry  of  the  mother,"  says  an  article  in  the 
New  York  Tribune  of  Nov.  6,  1877,  quoted  by  Miss  Ab 
bott.  The  women  were  considered  by  Americans  to  be 
more  intelligent  than  the  men.  f 

The  effect  of  the  Bohemian  influx  was  demoralizing 
to  the  trade.  It  was  complained  that  the  women  dis 
placed  men,  and  worked  for  prices  that  an  American 
would  not  work  for.  Probably  most  serious  was  the 
fact  that  they  worked  in  their  tenement  homes  and  helped 
to  make  cigar  making  in  New  York  for  a  time  a  sweated 
industry,  till  the  factory  again  reasserted  itself  over  the 
home  workroom. 

Another  count  against  the  Bohemian  cigar  makers  is 
that  "among  them  there  is  "less  prejudice  against  the 
work  -of  .married  women  than  among  most  other  nation 
alities."*  "  Many  oMiem  say  it  'pays '  to  go  on  with  their 
work  and  'hire  a  cheaper  woman'  to  do  part  of  their 
housework  and  look  after  their  children."  The  effects 
on  family  life  are  discussed  by  Dr.  Jane  Robbinsf  as 
follows: 

"  Home  life  among  the  Bohemians  exists  under  peculiar 
difficulties.  The  mothers  work  in  cigar  factories,  and 
besides  the  factory  work  they  have  the  bearing  and 
rearing  of  children,  and  sewing,  cooking,  washing  and 
cleaning  to  do  in  their  homes. 

' '  The  first  result  noticed  is  that  every  one  keeps  early 
hours.  At  nine  o'clock  on  a  winter  evening,  a  block 
occupied  by  Bohemian  families  is  wrapped  in  slumber, 

*  "The  percentage  of  married  women  employed  in  the  manu 
facture  of  cigars  and  tobacco  is  larger  than  in  any  other  indus 
try  in  the  list  given  under  the  manufacturing  group,  with  the 
single  exception  of  seamstresses;  11.18  per  cent  of  the  women 
in  the  whole  group  and  16.4  per  cent  of  those  in  'cigars  and 
tobacco'  were  married."  Abbott,  page  211. 

f  Robbins,  Jane  E.:  "The  Bohemian  Women  in  New  York." 
Charities,  XIII,  pages  194-6  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  359 

the  windows  of  the  houses  are  dark,  and  there  is  almost 
no  one  on  the  street.  The  working  day  begins  at  half 
past  five,  and  the  tired  mothers  must  have  their  children 
at  home  and  in  bed  at  an  early  hour. 

"The  most  noticeable  effect  of  having  the  mothers  go 
to  factory  is  that  the  ordinary  masculine  aversion  to 
doing  woman's  work.-is  greatly  moderated.  The  boys 
run  home  from  their  play  after  school  hours,  to  start  the 
kitchen  fire,  so  that  the  water  may  be  boiling  when  their 
mothers  come  home.  They  make  beds  and  sweep  and 
clean  house.  I  have  known  a  boy  of  eleven  to  acquire 
sufficient  knowledge  of  housework  so  that,  at  his  mother's 
death,  he  was  able  to  do  all  the  work  for  a  family  of  four. 
Several  times  I  have  come  into  a  home  and  found  the 
strong  young  husband  -washing,  and  not  at  all-embar- 
rassed  to  be  caught  at  the  washtub. 

"The  older  children,  both  boys  and  girls,  take  care  of 
the  younger  ones.  They  are  trained  to  responsibility 
from  their  earliest  youth,  and  make  great  gains  in  both 
strength  and  charm  of  character.  A  girl  of  thirteen  often 
has  the  care  of  several  younger  children,  besides  doing 
much  of  the  houseworfc"for  Lhe-iamily.  A  grandfather 
or  a  grandmother,  even  if  very  feeble,  is  a  great  addition  to 
the  family  life  in  furnishing  the  adult  point  of  view  in  the 
absence  of  both  parents.  A  neighbor,  too,  in  case  of 
sudden  emergency,  often  acts  in  loco  parentis,  and  a  very 
motherly  person  will  someli m  esjnpther  a  whole  neighbor 
hood. 

"One  woman  that  I  knew  had  ten  fine,  healthy  chil 
dren — she  had  never  lost  a  child — and  she  had  been  in 
factory  the  greater  part  of  the  time  through  the  twenty- 
five  years  of  her  married  life. 

"To  those  theorists  who  look  for  great  progress  when 
women  shall  obtain  a  position  of  economic  independence, 
the  Bohemian  women  cigar  makers  ought  to  be  an  in 
teresting  study.  The  wife,  with  her  quicker  fingers, 
often  makes  better  wages  than  her  husband.  I  asked  a 
thoughtful  Bohemian  of  the  educated  class  why  the 


360        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

women  did  not  demand  more  power,  since  they  contribute 
so  largely  to  the  family  finances,  and  he  answered, 
'  Because  they  would  not  consider  such  a  demand  fitting.' 
Husband  and  wife  seem  to  go  on  much  as  they  have 
•always  done  since  'male  and  female  created  he  them'. 

"The  Bohemians  are  cut  off  from  the  life  of  the  city, 
partly  by  their  inability  to  speak  English,  and  partly 
by  their  being  so  overworked  that  they  have  no  time 
even  to  see  what  other  people  are  doing." 

Home  con-  One  occasionally  hears  of  Slavic  working  girls  hiring 
ditions  of  a  room  or  rooms  together  and  living  in  a  co-operative 
girls  group,  boarding  themselves.  I  have  been  told  that 

Ruthenian  girls  do  this  in  New  York  city.  Very  com 
monly,  too,  they  board  in  families.  In  Jersey  City,  for 
instance,  I  was  told  that  the  girls  in  the  tobacco  factory 
lived  in  this  way  paying  very  reasonable  amounts  for 
their  accommodations. 

The  stand-         Though    the    Slavic   woman   has   her   importance  '  as 

ard  of  living  worjcing  woman,  as  servant  girl  and  as  "boarding  boss," 

she  is  ^infinitely  more  important  as  homemaker,  helping 

to  set  the  family  standard  of  living.    Standard  of  living — 

convenient  phrase  to  indicate  so  much!     What  can  one 

say  of  the  standard  of  living  of  a   group  of  several  mil- 

-V     lions  of  people,  of  nine  distinct  nationalities,  representing 

various  degrees  of  comfort  at   home  and  most  diverse 

fortunes  here,   from  the   millionaire  at  one  extreme  to 

the  "charity  organization  case"  at  the  other. 

American-  j  One  thing  can  be  said, — the  standard  in  general  is  ris- 
I  ing,  thanks  to  American  wages,  and  is  constantly  and 
powerfully  influenced  by  American  ways.  To  one  who 
does  not  believe  that  wisdom  begins  and  ends  with  the 
"Yankees,"  this  one-sided  imitation  does  not  seem  all 
gain.  For  instance,  the  ^bunting  hat,  especial  badge 
of  Americanization,  is  not  so  pretty  nor  so  rational  in 
any  way  as  the  discarded  kerchief,  and  American  house 
wives  might  learn  many  an  appetizing  and  nutritious 
dish  from  foreign  neighbors.  But  in  spite  of  involving 
some  loss,  the  process  of  amalgamation  through  imitation 


IN  A  PENNSYLVANIA  MINING  PATCH 

The  "company"  houses,  without  clapboards  or  shingles,  have  little  to  recommend  them. 
The  fences  and  summer  kitchens,  built  by  the  tenants  from  refuse  wood,  improve  the  comfort 
but  not  the  appearance  of  the  homes.  The  gutters  are  really  open  sewers.  The  bird  houses 
which  add  a  picturesque  touch  to  these  dreary  villages  are  common  among  the  Slavs. 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  361 

is  inevitable.  The  prestige  of  American  customs  as 
compared  with  imported  ones  is  overwhelming,  and  gives 
one  model  to  the  diverse  newcomers.  Imitation  pre 
pares  the  way  for  mutual  understanding  and  co-opera 
tion  among  neighbors  of  different  origins.  For  instance, 
to  an  American,  bare  feet  (certainly  for  grown  women) 
would  mean  the  extreme  either  of  slatternliness  or  of 
poverty.  To  a  Slav  it  means  neither,  any  more  than  it 
did  to  sturdy  Scotch  women  not  so  long  ago.  But  what 
does  not  detract  from  the  woman's  health  or  self-respect 
does  prevent  her  from  being  respected  by  her  neighbors, 
so  that  shoes  and  stockings  are  a  necessary  preliminary 
to  desirable  relations  with  them,  and  are  soon  adopted.* 

Another  thing  which  gives  a  false  impression  of 
poverty  and  degradation  is  the  absence  of  the  kind  of 
underclothes  to  which  we  are  accustomed.  A  child 
may  be  the  darling  of  prosperous  working  people,  well 
fed  and  well  cared  for,  yet  fill  an  American  visitor  with 
a  dismayed  sense  at  once  of  destitution  and  indecency. 
Yet  the  visitor  needs  to  know  only  a  little  social  history 
to  realize  how  recent  are  our  own  more  prim  fashions  of 
underclothing.  Here  again  imitation  of  American  ways 
is  the  first  step  toward  equal  intercourse. 

The  question  of  housing  for  the  Slavic  laborer  is  the  Housing 
question  of  working-class  housing  in  its  entirety.  Only 
here  the  evils  are  intensified  by  the  ignorance  and  help 
lessness  of  the  tenant,  and  by  a  feeling,  more  or  less 
unconscious  perhaps,  on  the  part  of  employers  and  public, 
that  what  is  not  good  enough  for  Americans  is  good 
enough  for  foreigners.  Life  in  a  tenement  has  at  best 
a  temporary  and  unhomelike  feeling  which  deadens  the 
desire  to  get  rid  of  evils  that  may  not  be  for  long;  and 
with  the  Slavs  the  desire  to  own  a  home,  which  is  wide 
spread  and  intense  among  those  who  have  made  a 
permanent  settlement  here  and  who  have  their  families 

*  Cf.  the  remark  of  the  Cleveland  Bohemian  quoted  on  page 
226. 


362        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IX    THE    UNITED    STATES 

with  them,  often  makes  the  hired  home  appear  only  an 
interim  arrangement.* 

Overcrowd-  Overcrowdingf  is  likely  to  be  the  most  serious  side  of 
a  low  standard  of  living — serious  from  its  relation  to 
-both  disease  '  and  immorality.  To  sleep  huddled  in 
feather  beds  in  a  stuffy  peasant  hovel  is  bad  enough,  but 
there  what  air  does  come  in  is  drawn  from  all  out-of-doors, 
not  from  an  airshaft,  and  in  summer,  at  least,  women  as 
well  as  men  are  in  the  fields  by  day  letting  the  fresh  air 
wash  their  lungs.  It  is  a  different  matter  when  the  same 
overcrowding  takes  place  in  a  city  tenement,  where  the 
mother  stays  all  day  long,  and  whence  the  children  go  to 
an  ill  ventilated  school  room,  and  the  father  to  a  dust 
laden  factory. 

Above  all,  overcrowding  is  objectionable  when  it 
brings  strangers  into  the  close  quarters  of  the  little 
home.  This  is  the  chief  evil  of  the  custom  of  taking 

(boarders  into  the  family,  but  overcrowding  is  not  always 
due  to  an  unwise  thrift.  Too  often  it  is  a  necessary 
corollary  of  prevailing  wages  and  prevailing  rents. 

And  I  am  tempted  to  quote  further  Miss  Byington's 
realistic  picture  of  such  an  overcrowded  boarding  house, 
where  twenty-four  souls  were  housed  in  two  rooms. 

"  One  of  these  homes  consisted  of  two  rooms,  one  above 
the  other,  each  perhaps  twelve  by  twenty  feet.  In  the 
kitchen  I  saw  the  wife  of  the  boarding  boss  getting 
dinner,  some  sort  of  hot  apple  cake  and  a  stew  of  the 
cheapest  cuts  of  meat.  Along  one  side  of  the  room  was 

*  I  note  that  Miss  Byington  says,  "This  instance  I  introduce 
because  it  is  well  to  recognize  that  low  standards  are  not  neces 
sarily  permanent.  When  Slavs  do  buy  their  homes,  the  size 
and  attractiveness  of  them  indicates  that  the  unsanitary  sur 
roundings  and  crowded  quarters  of  early  days  were  simply 
tolerated  until  the  ambition  could  be  attained.  'With  a  house  on 
the  outskirts  of  the  town,  a  garden  about  it,  and  a  glimpse  of  the 
larger  out-of-doors,  they  begin  to  feel  that  the  dreams  of  their 
emigration  have  come  true." — "The  Mill  Town  Courts  and  Their 
Lodgers." 

t  A  very  valuable  study  of  overcrowding  in  Homestead  will 
be  found  in  Miss  Byington's  article,  "Households  Builded  upon 
Steel."  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  1093-1104 
(Mar.  6,  1909). 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  363 

an  oil-cloth-covered  table,  with  a  plank  bench  on  each 
side,  and  above,  a  long  row  of  handleless  white  cups  in  a 
rack,  and  a  shelf  with  tin  knives  and  forks  on  it.  Near 
the  up-to-date  range,  the  only  real  piece  of  furniture  in 
the  room,  hung  the  'b.uckets'  in  which  all  mill  men  carry 
their  noon  or  midnight  meal.  A  crowd  of  men  were 
lounging  cheerfully  about,  talking,  smoking,  and  enjoy 
ing  life,  making  the  most  of  the  leisure  enforced  by  the 
shut-down  in  the  mill.  In  the  room  above,  double  iron 
bedsteads  were  set  close  together,  and  on  them  comforta 
bles  were  neatly  laid.  Here,  besides  the  'boarding boss' 
and  his  wife  and  two  babies,  lived  twenty  men.  The 
boss  himself  was  a  stalwart  Bulgarian  who  had  come  to 
this  country  several  years  ago,  and  by  running  this 
house,  besides  working  in  the  mill,  had  accumulated  a 
good  deal  of  money." 

Slavs  more  than  Italians  seem  inclined  to  use  enlarging  Diet 
income  to  procure  hearty  food,  and  especially  their  two 
great  luxuries,  meat  and  beer.  At  first  they  buy  mainly 
soup  meat,  and  it  is  hard  for  the  butchers  to  get  bones 
enough  to  supply  their  demand,  but  soon,  though  they 
continue  to  save,  they  Americanize  their  marketing  and 
get  the  best  cuts. 

Miss  Byington's   tables  of  expenditure*  show  an  ex-   Household 
ceptionally  large   percentage   for   food    and   an  excep-  budSets 
tionally    small    percentage    for    rent,    and    this   result, 
though  based  on  too  few  families  to  be  conclusive,  tallies 
with  my  impressions. 

The  nearest  to  a  family  budget  that  I  have  been  able 
to  secure  is  the  following  list,  given  me  by  a  Croatian 
co-operative  store  in  Calumet,  Michigan,  as  a  typical 
monthly  expenditure  for  groceries  by  a  miner's  family: 

June  1 6,  rice,  $0.25;  kidney  beans,  .25;  navy  beans,  .25; 
macaroni,  .25;  vermicelli,  .25;  noodles,  .25;  salad  oil,  .50; 
onions,  .10;  cabbage,  .25;  catsup,  .25;  chicory,  .10. 

June  20,  flour,  $2.75;  corn  meal,  .65;  rye  flour,  $1.25; 
matches,  .10. 

*  See  "Households  Builded  upon  Steel,"  page  1095. 


364        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

June  21,  eggs,  $0.22;    smoked  ham,  1.83;    bacon,  .90. 

June  26,  rice,  $0.25. 

June  27,  s.  oil,  $0.50;   vinegar,  .10;   eggs,  .22. 

June  28,  salt,  o.io. 

July  5,  onions,  $0.10;   eggs,  .22. 

July  9,  Peerless,  $0.18. 

July  10,  keroseneoil,  $0.15;  salt,  .10;  yeast,  .25;    onions,  .10. 

July  13,  sugar,  $0.25;   garlic,  .20;   eggs,  .22. 

July  1 6,  rice,  $0.25;  cabbage,  .35;  s.  oil,  .50;  manna,  .15; 
chow-chow,  .65;  stock  fish,  .30;  soda,  .93;  coffee,  $1.00;  tea, 
.60;  caraway  seed,  .10;  chicory,  .10. 

Total,  $18.42. 


The  members  of  this  co-operative  store  are  mostly 
"trammers,"  men  who  earn  less  than  the  miners  proper. 
With  incomes  of  $58  or  S6o  a  month,  when  working  every 
day,  a  co-operative  store  bill  like  this  of  $15  or  $18  would 
be  common.  Besides  this,  money  must  be  found  for 
the  butcher's  bill,  the  drink  bill,  the  dry  goods  bill  and 
the  rent.  At  a  Calumet  meat  market  where  Croatians 
trade  I  was  told  that  they  eat  more  meat  than  Germans 
or  Americans,  a  working  man  eating  two  or  three  pounds 
a  day.  A  family  would  commonly  have  a  butcher's  bill 
of  $25  a  month,  this  amount  covering  eggs  and  cheese 
as  well  as  meat,  but  not  milk,  as  many  kept  their  own 
cow.  They  eat  much  veal  and  pork,  also  fowl. 

In  a  Colorado  mining  settlement  I  was  told  at  the 
"company  store"  that  the  "Austrians"  (sc.  Slovenians) 
buy  just  about  what  Americans  do — good  flour,  tea, 
coffee,  sugar,  "the  necessary  staples"  such  as  crackers, 
canned  goods,  vegetables,  fruit  and  meat;  in  all  amount 
ing  to  from  $30  to  S6o  a  month  or  more  for  a  family  of  five 
or  so.  For  rent  these  men  pay  the  company  $2 .00  a  month 
per  room;  as  they  ordinarily  occupy  a  four-room  cottage, 
this  makes  a  monthly  rental  of  $8.00.  They  also  pay 
$i  .00  a  month  to  the  company  for  medical  and  hospital 
service.  The  furniture,  which  they  themselves  own,  is 
simple  and  scanty,  for  they  move  often ;  as  for  clothes, 
they  often  have  no  church  which  they  attend,  and  there 
is  small  demand  for  "dressing  up."  For  a  suit  a  man 


A  CROATIAN   BUTCHER'S  SHOP  IN  GLOBEVILLE,  COLORADO 


CROATIAN  COPPER  MINERS,  CALUMET,  MICHIGAN 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  365 

pays  perhaps  $10.  Fuel  is  cheap,  coal  costing  only  $1.15 
a  ton,  besides  which  the  women  and  children  can  often 
pick  up  enough  to  keep  the  family  supplied.  Of  course 
such  instances  are  merely  illustrative.  Anything  ex 
haustive  or  of  the  nature  of  an  authoritative  average  is 
out  of  the  question.* 

The  expenditure  for  drink  is,  undoubtedly  apt  to  be  (Drink 
large  among  Slavic  laborers.  The  southern  Slavs,  like 
the  Italians,  are  accustomed  to  use  light  wines;  the 
northern  nationalities  are  accustomed  to  liquors,  and  all 
seem  to  take  to  beer  like  ducks  to  water.  Indeed,  in 
Croatia  a  common  answer  to  questions  as  to  what  re 
turning  immigrants  said  of  America  was,  "They  say  that 
in  America  beer  is  cheap,  but  that  a  man  is  arrested  there 
for  getting  drunk,  and  just  the  same  even  if  he  is  rich." 
Besides  the  immense  number  of  saloons  which  American 
Slavs  support,  they  also  drink  a  great  deal  at  home,  espe 
cially  in  the  boarding  houses.  Miss  Byington's  table 
previously  mentioned  shows  a  great  excess  of  expenditure 
for  liquor  by  Slavs. 

Mr.  Fitch  in  his  study  of  the  Pittsburgh  steel  industry!  Heat  and 
speaks  of  the  special  temptation  to  drink  caused  by  the  thlrst 
heat  and  dust  of  the  mills.  Besides  this  "the  great 
majority  are  possessed  of  sincere  belief  that  they  must 
either  drink  or  fail.  A  daily  stimulant  they  consider 
essential  to  an  endurance  for  long  of  the  daily  twelve- 
hour  battle  with  heat  and  exhaustion.  As  a  result,  the 
saloons  are  taking  more  of  the  steel  workers'  money 
than  any  of  the  legitimate  business  establishments  of 
the  mill  towns.  I  was  told  by  a  man  who  was  in  a 
position  to  know  accurately  the  facts  of  the  saloon 
business  of  McKeesport  in  1906,  that  there  were  eighty 
saloons  in  this  city  of  about  30,000  population.  On 
the  Thursdays  preceding  the  semi-monthly  pay  days, 

*  Some  further  data  may  be  found  in  F.  J.  Sheridan's  article 
on  "Italian,  Slavic,  and  Hungarian  Unskilled  Immigrant 
Laborers  in  the  United  States,"  already  quoted. 

t  "The  Steel  Industry  and  the  Labor  Problem."  Charities 
and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  1079-1092  (Mar.  6,  1909). 


366        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

which  fall  on  Fridays  and  Saturdays,  the  three  leading 
saloon  keepers  of  the  city  drew  from  their  bank  accounts 
from  $1200  to  $1500  each  in  dollar  bills  and  small 
denominations  to  be  used  as  change.  Other  saloon 
keepers  drew  varying  amounts,  and  the  total  thus  drawn 
each  fortnight  was  over  $60,000.  On  the  Mondays 
after  pay  days  the  saloon  keepers  usually  deposited 
double  the  amount  drawn.  The  periodic  leaps  in  de 
posits  never  failed  to  coincide  with  pay  days,  and  the 
inevitable  conclusion  is  that  about  $60,000  of  steel 
workers'  wages  were  regularly  expended  in  the  saloons 
within  the  two  days." 

Celebra-  The  breweries  often  send  around  wagons  full  of  kegs 

on  Saturday  night,  and  where  the  company  controls  a 
mining  settlement,  as  in  some  places  in  Colorado,  and 
allows  no  liquor  on  the  premises,  they  can  do  nothing  to 
prevent  sales  from  the  "wet  bread  wagon"  on  the  high 
way.  On  Saturdays  liberal  provision  is  apt  to  be  mao!e 
for  the  next  day;  often  several  men  club  together  to 
buy  a  keg  of  beer  which  they  join  in  drinking  at  the  home 
of  one  of  them. 

One  hears  stories  of  such  a  party  putting  whiskey  in  a 
wash  tub  and  sitting  about  it,  dipping  it  out  as  wanted, 
replenishing  the  tub  with  beer  or  cheaper  liquor  as  the 
original  supply  grows  low  and  appetite  less  particular  if 
not  less  insistent.  In  many  of  the  small,  unkempt 
places  about  Pittsburgh,  places  like  McKees  Rocks,  for 
instance,  a  Monday  morning  sees  a  portentous  accumula 
tion  of  empty  kegs  lying  in  the  mud  at  the  doors  of  the 
Slav  boarding  places. 

The  heaviest  drinking,  .however,  is  on  ceremoniaLpc.ca- 
sions,  "especially  at  weddings  and  christenings  (not  at 
funerals).  Friends  are  invited,  or  in  small  places  per 
haps  all  comers  are  welcomed,  and  prolonged  merry 
makings  take  place.  These  festivals  lasting  for  days 
are  old  customs,  and  take  place  in  the  old  country 
among  entirely  self-respecting  people.  But  here  such 
occasions  too  often  turn  into  debauches,  and  too  often 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  367 

they  end,  not  unnaturally,  in  brawls.  This  does  more 
to  injure  the  reputation  of  Slavs  in  this  country 
than  everything  else  put  together,  and  some  priests, 
to  prevent  the  evil,  perform  weddings  on  Monday 
instead  of  on  Saturday.  When.sober,  Slavs  are  generally 
exceptionally  peaceable  and  gentle,  but  when  drunk 
they  are  quite  the  reverse.*  One  does  not  hear  of 
murders  from  motives  of  revenge  or  rivalry,  as  among 
Italians,  but  among  the  roughest  class  and  in  the  most 
neglected  Slavic  neighborhoods  brutal  and  sometimes 
bloody  rows  are  too  common.  Often  they  are  due  to 
old  racial  or  religious  feuds.  Perhaps  the  Ruthenians 
are  having  a  feast,  and  it  strikes  some  Polish  lads  that 
this  would  be  an  auspicious  moment  to  look  in  on  them. 
The  result  is  likely  to  be  about  what  might  be  expected 
to  follow  an  encounter  of  two  Bowery  "gangs." 

It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  in  Pennsylvania  where  an  Unjust 
antiquated  court  system  of  payment  by  fees  still  persists,  JUS 
one  constantly  hears  the  complaint  that  such  fights  are 
frequently  started  by  officers  who  come  in  and  make 
trouble  in  order  to  pocket  the  goodly  amount  of  money 
that  wholesale  arrests  bring  them  in.f     The  Slavs  do 

*  "One  officer,  who  had  been  on  the  force  for  nine  years, 
said  that  while  in  general  these  men  were  a  good-natured,  easy 
going  crowd,  and  in  all  his  experience  he  had  never  arrested  a  sober 
'Hunkie,'  when  they  were  drunk  there  was  trouble."  (The 
italics  are  the  author's.)  Byington:  "The  Mill  Town  Courts 
and  their  Lodgers." 

f  The  following  quotation  from  Mr.  Koukol  throws  light  on 
what  is  liable  to  happen. 

"  One  deplorable  trait  that  I  frequently  met  with  among  the 
Slavs  was  contempt  for  American  law.  The  existence  of  this 
trait  is  largely  due  to  the  teaching  of  experience — and  experience 
of  one  particular  sort.  The  story  of  Vilchinsky,  a  Ruthenian 
boarding-boss,  is  such  a  common  one,  it  illustrates  so  well  a 
wide-spread  condition  in  the  administration  of  law  by  the  petty 
aldermen's  courts  of  the  Pennsylvania  industrial  districts,  that 
it  is  worth  repeating  for  the  sake  of  its  general  significance. 

"October  14,  1907,  one  of  the  boarders  was  celebrating  his 
patron  saint's  day.  This  meant  a  lot  of  drinking  by  all,  and 
during  the  festivities  they  got  more  or  less  under  the  influence  of 
liquor,  but  they  were  in  their  own  home,  there  was  no  public 
disturbance,  and  toward  midnight  they  all  went  to  bed.  About 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  however,  when  they  were  all  asleep, 
policemen  came  to  the  house,  wakened  everybody  and  loaded 


368        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

not  seem  to  have  any  characteristic  national  weapon 
of  offence  like  the  Englishman's  fists,  the  Irishman's 
shillalah,  the  Italian's  stiletto,  the  Negro's  razor  or,  most 
deadly  of  all,  the  American's  revolver.  Men  who  are 
very  gentle  when  sober,  when  maddened  by  drink  will 
-  strike  with  anything  that  comes  to  hand — chairs, 

lamps,  knives. 

Confirmed  It  is  interesting  to  run  across  the  following  testimony 
from  Massachusetts.  Miss  Tyler  says,  "  Aside  from  these 
festivals  there  is  but  little  harmful  intemperance.  The 
village  doctor  of  Sunderland  says  that  there  is  very  little 
confirmed  drinking  among  the  Poles.  This  is  the  worst 
phase  of  intemperance  among  the  Irish  and  really  does 
more  lasting  harm  than  the  spasmodic  hard  drinking  of 
the  Pole.  Because  the  Poles'  intemperance  is  so  very 
apparent  at  certain  times  it  makes  a  worse  impression 
than  is  really  deserved."* 

them  into  patrol  wagons  and  buggies  and  took  them  to  a  police 
station.  The  boarding-boss,  four  girls  and  three  men  were  all 
taken  before  the  magistrate,  charged  with  disorderly  conduct. 
Without  any  regular  hearing — none  of  them  could  speak  English 
and  there  was  no  interpreter — the  squire  asked  for  twenty  dollars 
apiece  for  the  boarders,  and  fifty  dollars  for  the  boarding-boss. 
All  but  two  girls  paid  the  fine  immediately,  and  these  two  were 
then  sentenced  to  the  county  jail.  During  the  following  day, 
their  friends  succeeded  in  collecting  enough  money  to  pay  their 
fines  and  the  $1.50  extra  for  board  in  the  jail. 

"Abuses  such  as  this  are  generated  by  the  fact  that  aldermen 
and  constables  obtain  fees  out  of  the  fines,  which  makes  it  to  the 
financial  interest  of  these  officials  to  get  as  many  cases  into 
court  as  possible.  Many  men  I  have  talked  with  have  stated 
that  the  constables  often  provoke  disorder  when  none  exists, 
for  the  sake  of  the  profits  in  the  arrests.  The  Slavs  know  that 
they  are  victimized,  and  at  the  same  time  they  realize  their  help 
lessness  ;  the  natural  result  is  a  bitter  contempt  for  law. 

"Huh!"  sneered  Vilchinsky,  "the  police  are  busy  enough  all 
night  stopping  disorder  when  the  men  have  got  money.  But 
when  there's  hard  times,  like  there  is  now,  a  man  can  make  all 
the  noise  he  pleases  and  the  police  won't  arrest  him.  They  know 
he  hasn't  money  to  pay  a  heavy  fine  and  costs.  It  ain't  law 
they  think  about;  it's  money." 

Koukol,  A.:  "A  Slav's  a  Man  for  a'  That."  Charities  and 
the  Commons,  XXI,  page  596  (Jan.  2,  1909).  See  also  H.  V. 
Blaxter,  "The  Aldermen  and  their  Courts."  Charities  and  the 
Commons,  XXI,  pages  851-858  (Feb.  6,  1909). 

*  "The  Poles  in  the  Connecticut  Valley."  Smith  College 
Monthly,  June,  1909,  page  583. 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  369 

This  confirms  my  own  conclusion  that  the  strange 
and  encouraging  fact  is  that  with  all  this  drinking 
there  are  few  drunkards.  For  instance,  one  will  be  told 
in  a  Pennsylvania  mining  town  that  there  is  not  a  Slav 
in  the  place  who  loses  workingtime  through  intemperance, 
not  one  whose  wife  supports  him  by  taking  in  washing 
while  he  loafs  and  drinks.  Typical  is  the  statement  of  a 
Jersey  City  doctor  whose  practice  lies  largely  among  Ruthe- 
nians:  "They  drink,  but  few  are  drunkards,  or  hurt  their 
health  with  alcohol.  If  a  man  does  get  drunk  he  is 
likely  to  be  violent.  If  he  strikes  his  wife  she  defends 
herself  if  she  can,  but  she  does  not  complain,  for  'she 
knows  that  he  has  a  right  to  hit  her'  and  that  makes  a 
great  difference."  Dr.  Morritt,  of  the  Sociological  De 
partment  of  the  Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Company, 
says  of  the  Colorado  miners,  "All  Slavs  drink, 
.  .  yet  the  Slav  loses  less  time  from  work  by  in 
toxication  than  his  British  or  American  brother."  In 
other  places,  indeed,  one  will  hear  of  broken  work  days 
following  Sunday  debauches,  but  the  man  with  whom 
drunkenness  is  a  disease,  as  it  is  with  so  many  Americans, 
English  and  Irish,  is  certainly  not  typical  of  the  Slavs  in 
this  country.* 

There  is  among  the  Slavs,  however,  often  little  or  no 
condemnation  of  a  man's  being  drunk  on  occasion.  The 
objections  felt  against  intemperance  are  economic,  not 
ethical.  The  saloon  in  particular  has  no  moral  stigma 
upon  it.  It  still  carries  with  it,  I  think,  associations  of  the 
old-world  inn,  and  in  some  cases  is  openly  frequented  by 
women  as  well  as  by  men.  The  saloon  keeper  is  apt  to  be 
an  influential  figure  and  a  leader  in  group  undertakings. 
As  already  said,  it  is  often  he  who  stirs  up  the  men  of 
his  colony  to  call  a  priest  and  build  a  church.  Under 

*  An  eminent  Bohemian  who  knows  the  conditions  both  in 
Bohemia  and  in  the  United  States,  said  to  me  that  many  a  young 
man  drinks  to  excess  at  home  in  the  dull  village  because  it 
offers  him  no  excitement  or  healthful  interest,  that  it  is  the 
brightest  and  most  energetic  fellows  who  are  most  likely  to  do 
so  and  that  when  such  men  get  to  America  and  have  an  outlet 
for  their  energies,  they  stop  drinking. 
24 


Public 
opinion  and 
drinking 


370        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

such  circumstances  it  is  hard  for  the  priest  to  energeti 
cally  and  honestly  fight  intemperance.  Some  priests 
indeed  are  not  in  a  position  to  preach  against  over 
indulgence  with  a  good  grace  and  many  are  not  much 
more  advanced  than  their  flocks  in  their  feeling  about  it. 
That  some  priests  do  combat  intemperance  effectively  is 
all  the  more  to  their  credit  in  view  of  all  this.  "He 
speaks  to  them  right  from  the  altar,"  said  an  admiring 
Irish  policeman  of  a  certain  Polish  priest.  It  is  perhaps 
worth  noting  that  this  priest  was  partly  if  not  wholly 
educated  in  America.  . 

An ojher-iaflttenee  making  for  temperance  is  that  of  the 
women.  Where  they  are  scarce  they  can  afford  to  pick 
and  choose  their  husbands — in  biological  terms,  they 
become  an  effective  selective  agency — and  women  usu 
ally  have  a  prejudice  against  drinking  husbands. 

Growing  Americanization  is  also  often  a  powerful 
force  against  the  old  drinking  ways ;  one  frequently  hears 
it  said  that  the  young  people  drink  less  than  their  elders, 
and  though  this  is  not  always  true  of  the  second  genera 
tion,  I  am  confident  that  it  will  generally  hold  of  the 
third. 

Dress  Clothes  are  the  most  conspicuous  index  of  the  standard 

of  expenditure,  and  are  of  course  largely  valued  as  such, 
by  the  Slav  as  much  as  by  any  one.  The  intending 
immigrant  often  buys  and  puts  on  for  the  first  time 
"European  clothes"  as  a  preparation  for  his  journey. 
Few  of  those  who  wear  a  peasant  costume  at  home 
arrive  in  it  at  Ellis  Island.  They  leave  their  beautiful 
embroidered  garments  behind,  carefully  instructed  to 
do  so  by  the  friends  in  America.  They  know  that  such 
things  would  excite  derision  here,  and  indeed  they 
themselves  are  prone  to  despise  them  in  comparison  with 
the  cheap,  ready-made  goods  which  they  buy  at  the 
port  where  they  embark,  if  not  before  leaving  home. 
Often,  however,  they  purposely  buy  few  and  cheap 
things  in  Europe,  waiting  to  fit  themselves  out  to  better 
advantage  in  America.  "  Then  the  Americans  think  that 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  371 

we  never  owned  any  good  clothes  before,"  they  have 
complained  to  me. 

Once  established  here,  the  process  of  expansion  of 
wants  is  a  rapid  one.  An  American  minister  in  a  mining 
city  said  to  me,  "They  become  Americanized  sooner 
than  any  element.  In  a  few  months  they  lose  all  marks 
except  physical  ones.  They  begin  as  day  laborers. 
First  a  man  gets  himself  a  tailor-made  suit  of  good  style ; 
then  he  gets  a  trunk  to  lock  up  this  and  his  money  in. 
Then  he  buys  a  watch.  As  soon  as  he  gets  confidence 
he  begins  to  deposit  money." 

Nothing  is  too  good  for  them,  especially  for  their 
children  and  the  young  women.  As  some  one  has  said, 
"A  striking  hat,  corsets  and  clothes  of  modern  cut  do 
not  look  well  on  the  mother,  but  they  do  on  the  daughter. " 
"When  they  have  come  under  the  rules,"  an  Irish  shop 
keeper  in  a  little  mining  city  in  Pennsylvania  said  to  me, 
"they  want  the  best  goods  and  they  want  them  up  to 
date.  If  they  do  not  know  themselves  what  is  the  style, 
or  if  they  do  not  speak  English,  they  bring  a  friend  with 
them  who  does." 

From  the  point  of  view  of  beauty  they  suffer  immeasur-  The  hat 
ably  by  this  change  to  our  sweatshop  and  factory-made 
clothes.  Perhaps  they  will  not  lose  all  their  old  sense 
for  color,  even  so;  I  was  pleased  to  be  told  by  an  artist 
that  he  had  been  struck  with  most  agreeable  surprise 
at  the  choice  of  colors,  brilliant  but  harmonious,  in  the 
dress  of  the  Polish  girls  gathered  in  a  Catholic  church. 
The  hat  has  to  these  women  a  symbolic  value  which  is 
not  generally  appreciated  by  us,  perhaps  not  even  by 
Miss  Johnson,  though  she  makes  her  charming  story, 
"The  Wife  from  Vienna,"  turn  upon  it.*  It  means  to 

*  This  story,  which  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  of  January,  1906, 
is  one  of  several  delightful  sketches  which  Miss  Johnson,  of 
Pittston,  has  given  us.  Though  they  generally  deal  with 
Lithuanians  they  reflect  quite  closely  the  atmosphere  of  Slavic 
life  in  a  mining  town.  "A  Ticket  for  Ona,"  "Landless  Men" 
and  "Weed's  Daughter,"  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  of  January, 
1908,  March,  1907,  and  June,  1906,  respectively.  "The  Younger 
Generation"  appeared  in  the  American  Magazine  for  September, 
1906.  On  the  significance  of  the  American  hat  see  pages  106— 
7  and  188  above. 


372        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


The  trous 
seau 


The  home 


Music 


them  stepping  out  of  the  serving  class, 

ranks  of  the  peasants,  for  at  home  no  woman  below  the 

middle  class  would  wear  a  hat,  howeyet" well  off. 

In  the  Pennsylvania  mining  towns  it  is  the  custom 
among  the  Slavs  and  Lithuanians  for  a  young  man  who 
is  engaged  to  be  married  to  take  his  future  wife  to  buy  her 
outfit.  He  stands  by,  awkward  and  pleased,  while  she 
makes  her  purchases,  for  which  he  pays.  You  see  them 
coming  down  the  street  together — conscious,  happy,  and 
laden  with  parcels. 

The  home  of  a  Slav  miner  is  often  a  quaint  mixture 
of  old  and  new-world  features.  Over  the  door  are 
crosses  and  the  initials  of  the  Three  Kings,  drawn  there 
in  chalk  last  Twelfth  Night  by  the  priest  when  he  came 
to  bless  the  house;  round  the  walls  of  the  living  room  a 
row  of  gaudy  colored  prints  of  sacred  subjects  in  cheap 
frames,  hang  just  under  the  ceiling.  There  are  much- 
washed  lace  curtains  at  the  windows,  and  covers  of  home 
made  crocheted  lace  lie  on  the  cheap  shellacked  sideboard 
and  table.  Everything  is  spotless,  and  if  the  invading 
Americanism  shows  itself  in  hideous  bric-a-brac  and 
crayon  portraits  of  members  of  the  family,  it  at  least 
speaks  of  hope,  movement  and  purpose.* 

A  Slavic  family  are  likely  to  spend  what  margin  they 
can  afford  above  food,  clothing  and  shelter,  in  different 
ways  from  the  average  American  family;  for  one  thing, 
the  dust-breeding  carpet  comes  later  and  the  piano 

*  One  observer  hits  off  a  prevalent  type  so  well  that  I  quote 
her  description:  "This  home  has  neither  the  air  of  poverty,  nor 
of  prosperity,  but  somehow  nicely  preserves  the  balance  between 
the  two.  .  .  .  The  native  tastes  of  these  people  are  plainly  shown 
in  their  homes,  where  the  most  striking  feature  is  the  excess  of 
decoration ;  for  the  household  gods  of  the  Slavic  home  are  order 
liness  and  decoration.  A  superabundance  of  paper  flowers  and 
crocheted  lace  in  the  form  of  tidies,  draperies  and  curtains  shows 
the  native  industries  of  the  Slavic  women.  The  elaborate 
altar-cloths  and  priestly  garments  seen  in  their  churches  are  the 
handiwork  of  the  Polish  women.  They  complain  of  no  time  for 
lace-making  in  America,  but  their  little  girls  are  taught  it,  never 
theless,  in  the  public  schools,  just  as  they  themselves  were  taught 
it  in  the  schools  at  home." — White,  Elizabeth  T. :  "Investiga 
tion  of  Slavic  Conditions  in  Jersey  City,"  page  8. 


BETTER  TYPES  OF  "COMPANY"  HOUSES  FOR  SLAVIC  MINERS 

In  a  settlement  where  the  owners  are  interested  to  improve    conditions.     The  fences  are  trim, 
trees  have  been  set  out  and  gardens  flourish. 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  373 


earlier,  since  music  isth£^f^ajid_,the.jo^. 
This  is  one  of  tlie~~comparatively  few  generalizations 
which  it  is  safe  to  make  as  to  the  whole  group  of  Slavic 
nationalities.  (And  I  say  this,  who  have  been  guilty 
of  so  many  such  generalizations!)  It  is  not  uncommon 
to  find  a  large  upright  piano  wedged  between  two  im 
mense  beds  in  a  little  bedroom.  I  shall  not  soon  forget 
a  call  on  a  family  of  Slovak  coke  burners  on  a  blizzard- 
lashed  hillside  above  Punxsutawny.  They  occupied 
one  half  of  a  bare  company  house  built  of  upright  planks 
painted  the  usual  cheap,  dull  red.  Indoors  one  son, 
just  returned  from  work,  was  playing  (as  appeared  to 
my  unmusical  comprehension)  with  great  beauty  on  a 
really  good  piano.  As  it  happened  that  I  knew  their 
priest  at  home  in  Hungary,  a  scholar  and  rarely  gifted 
linguist,  there  was  comparatively  little  difficulty  in 
breaking  the  ice  of  shyness  which  usually  makes  the 
approach  to  acquaintance  with  Slavs  so  slow  and  diffi 
cult,  and  I  learned  that  one  other  son  was  a  priest, 
another  a  seminary  student  preparing  probably  for  a 
secular  profession,  and  one  daughter  a  nursing  sister. 

Where  a  piano  is  out  of  the  question  there  are  less 
expensive  instruments,  fiddles,  harmonicas,  and  the  vari 
ous  guitar-like  instruments  used  by  the  Croatians. 

Though   few   things   compare   in   forlornness  with   a   Surrotmd- 
Pennsylvania   "mining  patch,"   this  is   due  mainly  to   '^inino6 
the  industry  as  it  is  there  carried  on  ;  to   the  shocking  patch'  ' 
desolation   of  the  stripped  hillsides;  the  "  cave-ins,"  the  settlements 
mountain-like  piles  of  culm  and  refuse,   the  buildings 
(especially  the  company  tenements),  erected  without  a 
thought  of  anything  but  economy;   and  worst  of  all,  the 
streams  choked  and  overflowed  with  drifted  coal  refuse. 
The  homes  of  the  Slav  miners  have  not  that  grassless, 
hen-ridden  look  which  so  often  marks  the  yards  of  even 
fairly  well-to-do  Irish  people.     The  Slavs  generally  love 
a  garden,  and  during  the  coal  strike  some  of  the  Slav 
and  Lithuanian  miners  used  their  enforced  leisure  to 
grade  and  grass  their  little  yards  and  to  make  gardens 
which   they  have   ever  since  found   time  to   cultivate. 


374        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Unfortunately  their  very  fondness  for  a  garden  con 
tributes  to  the  miserable  aspect~5T~1iiirrgs*  in  a  mining 
patch,  as  in  order  to  protect  the  vegetables  and  flowers 
they  make  a  fence  of  such  wood  as  they  can  find,  of  old 
mine  props,  broken  and  blackened,  of  railroad  ties  and 
odd  sticks  of  all  sorts.  Of  similar  material  they  also 
build  a  more  or  less  ramshackle  shed  for  a  summer 
kitchen,  adding  greatly  to  the  family  comfort  in  the  heat. 
Appearances,  however,  suffer  by  these  attempts  that 
really  mean  thrift,  ingenuity  and  love  of  beauty  and 
comfort.  The  little  bird-house  with  which  the  Slav 
loves  to  top  his  home  adds  an  oddly  attractive  and  pic 
turesque  touch  to  the  clustering  shanties. 
Cleanliness  As^JxL_d£anJiness,  in  spite  of  serious  drawbacks  the 
Pr°g"  Slavs  deserve  in  general  a  high  rank.^JThose  who  have 
seerr  diPiy  ftOUSBllOldb  oTImlTvrcTuaTs  will  dissent  vigor 
ously,  but  more  of  those  who  know  will,  I  am  sure,  agree. 
Many  of  these  people  are  exceedingly  primitive,  but 
they  are  the  reverse  of  a  slatternly  people.  In  all  this 
matter,  and  especially  if  we  undertake  the  gratuitous 
folly  of  invidious  comparisons,  we  must  remember  that 
we  are  viewing  a  process.  "The  Irish  lived  far  worse 
when  they  first  came  to  Wilkes-Barre  than  the  Slavs 
ever  have  done,"  I  was  told.  "The  Irish  used  to  make 
dug-outs  in  the  hillsides,  and  live  in  them  with  their 
animals."  The  living  conditions  of  some  of  our  German 
immigrants,  too,  were  on  a  very  low  level  when  they  first 
came.  But  opportunity  has  meant  rise,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  the  same  rise  is  occurring  rapidly  among 
our  Slavic  fellow  citizens.* 

As  a  bit  of  evidence,  I  will  repeat  what  was  said  to 
me  on  this  point  by  a  Ruthenian  informant  in  western 
Pennsylvania : 

*  Miss  Garret  writes  of  the  Poles  in  Baltimore:  "The  houses 
are  cleaner  than  those  occupied  by  any  other  group  of  foreigners 
among  us.  The  halls  are  whitewashed  once  or  twice  a  year,  the 
floors  are  scrubbed  (the  tenants  in  turn  doing  the  general  work) 
and  the  rooms  are  kept  wonderfully  neat.  .  .  .  Neighbors, 
business  men,  doctors,  teachers  all  lay  stress  on  the  extreme 
neatness  and  cleanliness  of  the  Polish  people."  Charities,  XI, 
page  273  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  375 

"Formerly  our  people  could  save  and  send  money 
home;  now  if  a  man  has  a  family  he  cannot.  Prices 
have  risen  faster  than  wages  have  done,  that  is  one  reason ; 
but  the  chief  reason  is  that  they  demand  more  and  live 
better.  For  instance,  formerly  the  men  never  wore  an 
overcoat,  no  matter  how  cold  it  was.  They  wore  blue 
overalls,  no  collar  and  no  tie.  They  had  no  churches, 
no  societies  and  no  papers.  All  these  things  mean  ex 
pense.  They  still  live  pretty  crowded,  but  less  so  than 
before.  From  fifty  to  one  hundred  of  them  used  to  live 
in  one  house,  not  a  big  one.  There  were  no  women 
among  them,  and  other  people  would  not  take  them  to 
board.  If  there  was  a  man  who  had  a  wife,  all  flocked 
to  him.  There  would  be  twenty-five  boarders  in  a 
family,  where  now  there  would  be  eight  or  ten.  Ten 
years  ago  they  used  to  have  plank  shelves  for  bedding 
round  the  wall  in  some  mining  patches.  Now-a-days  all 
have  regular  beds." 

The  whole  impression  left  on  one's  mind  is  that  of 
an  ambitious  set  of  people,  eager  to  get  on,  of  enduring 
fibre,  not  at  all  afraid  of  hard  work. 

No  effort  has  been  made  to  describe  household  con-  Upper  and 
ditions   among   Slavic-Americans   other   than   those   of  J^g^ 
the  laboring  class.     Among  business  men  and  men  of  the 
professions   the   standard   of   living  is   regulated   as   is 
that  of  similar  American  families.     The  only  distinctive 
characteristic  that  I  note  is  a  greater  simplicity,  a  warmth 
and  quiet  intensity  of  family  life,  a  marked  love  of  music  : 
and  often  of  intellectual  pursuits,  and  what  seems  to  . 
an   American   eye   a   rather  uncritical   aesthetic   sense.  I 
According  to  circumstances  the  European  or  the  Ameri 
can  note  prevails  in  the  blended  tastes  of  the  household, — 
in  the  table,  the  dress,  the  furniture,  the  reading. 

Physically  they  seem  for  the  most  part  a  rugged  people,  Physique 
especially  the  picked  contingent  of  young  ambitious  men 
and  women  who  emigrate.  As  a  general  thing  they 
appear  not  to  suffer  from  our  climate,  though  it  is  some 
times  complained  of.  As  one  sees  them  at  home  in 
Europe,  they  often  seem  to  be  almost  insensible  to  either 


376        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

heat  or  cold.  They  come  largely  from  districts  subject 
to  severe  changes  of  temperature,  often  very  sudden 
changes.  Emil  Franzos  describes  snowstorms  blowing 
across  the  Galician  plains  which  outdo  a  Dakota  blizzard, 
and  the  limestone  country,  the  Karst  of  the  South 
Slavs,  is  also  a  country  of  violent  extremes. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  change  to  city  life  is  very 
taxing.* 

Tuberculosis  claims  its  own  in  unsanitary  tenements 
and  workshops.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  anaemia,  and 
when  the  roses  fade  in  the  cheeks  of  a  flaxen-haired 
Polish  girl,  she  is  shockingly  pale.  The  Bohemians  of 
New  York  seem  to  supply  an  inordinately  large  share  of 
cases  of  hysteria  and  of  suicide. 

The  peasant  women  of  the  first  generation  amaze  our 
women  by  their  endurance.  One  of  their  own  mid-wives 
told  me  that  they  have  as  hard  confinements  as  Ameri 
cans,  but  that  they  recover  more  quickly.  In  Allegheny 
a  settlement  friend  went  to  see  a  neighbor  and  found 
her  at  nine  o'clock  barefoot  in  the  yard  hanging  out 
clothes.  She  had  borne  a  child  at  midnight,  after  which 
she  had  arisen  and  got  breakfast  for  the  men  of  her 
family  and  then  done  the  washing. 

Even  if  a  woman  is  physically  able  to  do  this  sort  of 
thing,  she  is  aged  by  it — by  that  and  the  continuous 
child-bearing.  Yet  this  is  their  ideal.  "What  do  your 

*  Miss  White  in  her  ' '  Investigation  of  Slavic  Conditions  in 
Jersey  City"  notes:  "The  majority  of  the  men  and  women,  all 
of  whom  spent  their  youth  in  their  native  land,  were  found  to 
be  strong  and  hearty.  But  the  children,  born  and  reared  in 
this  country,  are  pale  and  sickly  looking.  It  is  a  disheartening 
fact  that  they  are  not  profiting  by  the  strength  that  is  theirs 
by  right  of  inheritance."  "Undoubtedly  the  confinement  of 
these  out-of-door  children  in  unsanitary  houses  and  worse 
than  unsanitary  backyards,  is  the  cause  of  their  physical  de 
generation."  (Page  4.)  Compare  also  Miss  Byingtpn:  "The 
Slavs  themselves,  moreover,  are  people  used  to  the  limitations 
of  country  life,  and  are  ignorant  of  the  evil  effects  of  transferring 
the  small  rooms,  the  overcrowding,  the  insufficient  sanitary  pro 
visions  which  are  possible  with  all  outdoors  about  them,  to  these 
crowded  courts  under  the  shadow  of  the  mill.  And,  as  we  said, 
their  ambition  to  save  and  buy  property,  here  or  in  the  old 
country,  is  a  further  incentive  to  overcrowding."  "The  Mill 
Town  Courts  and  their  Lodgers,"  page  922. 


HOUSEHOLD    LIFE  377 

people  think  of  Americans?"  I  asked  a  Slovenian  priest. 
"Our  women  despise  American  women  because  they 
have  small  families,"  was  the  prompt  reply,  and  this  is  a 
sentiment  frequently  met  with. 

A  very  interesting  question,  and  one  that  is  hard  to  Position  of 
answer,  is  that  of  the  personal  position  of  the  women.  women 
My  own  impression  is  that  the  real,  not  nominal,  balance 
of  power  in  the  household  adjusts  itself  in  any  country 
to  the  relative  personal  force  of  the  individuals  in  each 
case;  that  common  sense,  business  acumen,  temper  and 
quiet  force  of  will,  all  have  their  effect,  regardless  of  sex, 
regardless  of  theory;  and  I  should  confidently  look  for 
henpecked  ^husbands  in  harems  and  for  enfranchised 
women  tyrannized  over  by  men  with  not  one  tittle  of 
legal  advantage. 

This  is  not  to  say,  however,  that  law,  and  still  more, 
custom,  do  not  affect  the  position  of  the  sexes  profoundly, 
and  it  is  suggestive  to  be  told  that  in  Croatia  wives  warn 
their  husbands  that  in  America  things  will  be  different, 
for  women  have  more  power  there.  Indeed,  we  found  in 
Croatia  especially  a  widespread  and  wonderful  legend 
of  the  position  of  women  in  America.  "Is  it  true,"  an 
anxious  man  asked,  "that  when  there  is  a  lawsuit  the 
woman  goes  to  court  and  attends  to  it,  and  the  husband 
stays  at  home?"  I  think  that  it  is  true  that  in  this 
country- the  men  learn  more  respect  for  the  women,  and 
acquire  gentler  manners  toward  them;  and  doubtless, 
as  already  said,  the  relative  scarcity  of  women  gives  them 
more  weight.*  One  hears  of  the  husband  putting  all  his 
earnings  into  the  wife's  hands  to  manage,  as  is  so  gener 
ally  the  custom  among  the  better  class  of  American 
workmen — a  custom  that  is  likely  to  make  for  thrift 
and  wise  expenditure.  In  a  higher  range  of  society, 
among  the  Bohemians  especially,  the  women  are  quite 
active  and  well  organized.  They  have  their  own 
associations  and  their  own  papers. 

*The  improved  status  of  immigrant  wives  in  America  is  a 
subject  frequently  and  entertainingly  illustrated  by  anecdotes 
in  Mr.  Steiner's  "The  Immigrant  Tide." 


CHAPTER  XVII 


Slavic  or 
ganizations 


The  national 
societies 


THE  ORGANIZED  LIFE  OF  SLAVS  IN  AMERICA* 

One  of  the  most  surprising  facts  in  the  life  of  Slavs 
in  America  is  the  degree  to  which  they  are  organized  into 
societies.  There  seems  to  be  nothing  in  their  previous 
history  or  experience  to  lead  one  to  expect  this,  and 
it  has  been  an  historical  commonplace  to  reproach  the 
Slav  with  a  congenital  inability  to  combine.  Yet  in  their 
new  environment  they  are  notable  for  the  contrary 
tendency. 

Many  of  their  associations  are  small  local  affairs  of 
the  most  various  sorts.  In  a  New  York"  Bohemian  paper 
I  foun~oT~a~list-or'  95  local  societies  among  this  group  of 
perhaps  35,000  people.  Many  were  mere  "pleasure 
clubs,"  to  use  the  current  East  Side  phrase,  while  many 
were  lodges  of  various  of  their  great  "national" 
societies. 

I  Each  of  the  main  Slavic  nationalities  in  the  United 
[States  has  one  or  more  of  these  national  societies,  all 
apparently  organized  on  much  the  same  plan,  with  a 
central  co-ordinating  committee  and  numerous  branches, 
founded  primarily  for  the  object  of  mutual  insurance  but 
also  serving  many  other  purposes,  and  with  a  member 
ship  defined  by  national  or  national-religious  lines. 

When  one  considers  the  scattered  groups  of  poor  and 
ignorant  immigrants,  totally  unused  to  organization  and 
foreign  to  all  ideas  of  parliamentary  procedure,  from 
which  these  societies  must  draw  a  large  part  of  their 
membership  it  is  remarkable  how  rapidly  they  have 
grown,  how  highly  developed  and  successful  they  are. 

*  The  facts  in  this  chapter  were  gathered  mainly  in  1907, 
and  reference  is  in  general  to  data  of  that  year,  except  when 
otherwise  stated. 

378 


A  SLOVAK  MASS  MEETING  IN  CLEVELAND 

A  protest  against  Hungarian  outrages 


A  POLISH  HALL  IN  CHICAGO 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       379 

When  men  are  scattered  in  a  strange  country,  the  Grounds  of 
"consciousness  of  kind"  with  fellow  countrymen  has  a  cotiesion 
very  special  significance.  As  has  been  said  in  a  previous 
chapter,  to 'many  an  immigrant  the  idea  of  nationality 
first  becomes  real  after  he  has  left  his  native  country; 
at  home  the  contrast  was  between  village  and  village, 
and  between  peasants  as  a  class  and  landlords  as  a  class. 
In  America  he  finds  a  vast  world  of  people,  all  speaking 
unintelligible  tongues,  and  for  the  first  time  he  has  a 
vivid  sense  of  oneness  with  those  who  speak  his  own 
language,  whether  here  or  at  home. 

The  idea  of  national  or  racial  patriotism  is  not  so 
new  to  those  from  localities  in  Europe  where  different 
nationalities  or  different  churches  are  intermingled  and 
struggling  for  power,  and  where  the  fires  of  party  zeal 
are  always  kept  alight.  From  such  districts  men  often 
emigrate,  already  full  of  national  or  party  consciousness. 
This  is  especially  marked  in  the  case  of  leaders,  some  of 
whom  come  to  America  to  enlist  recruits  for  their  side 
in  European  issues,  and  to  make  use  of  the  awakening 
intelligence  of  their  emigrated  fellow  countrymen  to 
prepare  them  to  play  a  more  manly  part  under  oppres 
sion,  and  to  secure  for  themselves  and  their  brethren 
fair  and  reasonable  treatment  at  home. 

But  it  is  not  only  common  speech  and  ways,  and  in  iCommon 
some  cases  common  political  aims,  that  draw  the  diirerent'''C^t 
groups  of  immigrants  together^  ^but  _alsj)_t^-S^nse>-of ,,.^ 
economic  weakness.     The  especially  dangerous  character 
bt-tke-work  in  the  mines  and  foundries  which  employ 
so  many  Slavs  is  calculated  to  enhance  their  appreciation 
of  the  advantages  of  mutual  aid. 

The  result  is  this  great  number  of  Slavic  societies, 
the  total  membership  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  calcu 
late,  especially  as  one  man  may  belong  to  several  socie 
ties.  Taking  the  figures  as  they  stand,  however,  we 
find  for  the  Bohemians  alone  about  66,000  members 
in  a  dozen  or  so  chief  societies.  The  Slovaks,  who  are 
probably  about  as  numerous  in  this  country  as  the  Bo- 


380        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

hemians,  appear  to  have  over  120,000  society  members.* 
For  other  nationalities  I  have  no  estimates  of  totals, 
only  figures  for  certain  individual  societies. 

The  The  oldest  existing  Slavic  society  was  found  ad  by  the* 

v  "•  ^••»"-"fl3oherrrrai<i8  ab  &fr.  LuiliytPTTg^JT^under  the  name  of  the 
I  Chekho-Slavonic  Benevolent  Society,  or  as  it  is  commonly 
called  by  the  initials  of  this  name  in  Bohemian,  the 
C.  S.  P.  S.     In  the  religious  controversies  which  soon 
divided  American  Bohemians  into  two  camps,  this  came 
to  represent  the  free  thinking,   anti-Catholic  side.     It 
numbers  about  23,000  members  in  216  branches. 
Polish  Na-    /     Tte^largest  single  society  appears  to  be  the  Eoii&L. 
1H~  /  N;1fl'rvnQl  Alli'an^  ^th  Q  membership  of  53,000  in  780 
/  branches.  "  This,  like  the  preceding,  is  much  more  than  a 
mutual  benefit  society,  though  it  is  that  also.     In  its 
fine  building  in  Chicago  it  has  not  only  central  offices 
and  committee  rooms,  but  a  museum  and  library  and' 

*  Rev.  Stephen  Furclek  of  Cleveland,  in  a  pamphlet  on  mutual 
benefit  associations,  dated  1908,  gives  the  following  figures  for 
Slovak  associations: 

I.  Katolicka  Slovenska  Jednota  (First  Catholic  Slovak 
Union);  members,  33,000. 

Narodny  Slovensky  Spolok,  (National  Slovak  Society); 
28,000. 

Gre"cko  Kat.  Sojedinenie  (Greek  Catholic  Association); 
20,879. 

Pennsylv^nska  Gre"c.  Kat.  Slovenska"  Jednota  (Penn.  Greek 
Catholic  Slovak  Union);  6,000. 

Evanjelicka  Slovenska  Jednota  (Evangelical  [sc.  Lutheran] 
Slovak  Union);  8,000. 

Telovicna  Jednota  Sokol  (A  gymnastic  Society);    3741. 

Clevelandska  Slov.  Jednota;  1000. 

Passaicka  Slovenska  Jednota;    1000. 

Neodvisly  Nar.  Slov.  Spolok  (Independent  National  Slovak 
Society);  2000. 

Slovensky  Venec  (literally,  Slovak  Garland);    1061. 

Kalvinska"  Slov.  Jednota  (Calvinistic  [sc.  Presbyterian] 
Slovak  Union);  1000. 

I  Kat.  Slov.  2enska  Jednota  (First  Catholic  Slovak  Women's 
Union) ;  8000. 

2ivena,  6000. 

Pennsylvanska  Slovenskd  2enska  Jednota;  3000. 

Evanjelicka  Slovenska  2enska  Jednota;    1000. 

(The  last  four  are  women's  societies.) 

I  find  this  reference,  which  may  also  be  useful.  Furdek, 
Stefan:  "2ivot  Slovakov  v  Amerike,"  (Life  of  Slovaks  in  Amer 
ica)  in  Tovarysstvo,  III,  Ruzomberok,  Hungary,  1890. 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       381 

the  printing  establishment  of  its  organ,  Zgoda  (Unity). 
It  has  special  sections  or  committees  for  Education, 
Agriculture  and  Industry,  Young  People,  Music,  Gym 
nastics,  Charity  and  the  Kosciuszko  monument  which  the 
Poles  are  erecting  in  Washington.  It  maintains  about 
thirty  scholarships,  and  ninety-two  libraries,  besides 
distributing  books  and  pamphlets.  Each  member  con 
tributes  twenty-one  cents  a  month,  besides  assessments 
to  cover  death  benefits  and  one  cent  a  month  for  charity. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these  organizations  is  National 
the  National  Slavonic  (sc.  Slovak)  Society,  which, 
between  1906  and  the  time  of  its  foundation  in  1890  had 
paid  over  $3,500,000  in  death  benefits,"and'ln"l;he  three 
years  ending  April  3oth,  1906,  $350,000  in  sick  benefits. 
This  society  has  a  markedly  patriotic  character;  it 
assists  Slovak  students,  ("some  124"  in  the  last  year  of 
which  I  have  information),  it  encourages  and  dissemi 
nates  Slovak  literature,  raises  funds  for  Slovak  political 
prisoners  in  Hungary  (where  the  Slovaks  are  so  bitterly 
oppressed),  organizes  patriotic  meetings,  and  generally 
acts  as  representative  of  the  nationality.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  that  it  requires  members  to  become  American 
citizens  within  six  years  of  joining  the  society. 

Comparable    with    these    societies    are    the    National   Other  na- 
Croatian  Society,  with  22,000  members,  the  little  Rus-  *9£sal  sociv 
sian   National   Union  with    10,000,   and  the  Slovenian 
National  Benevolent    Society.     The  Croatian  National 
Society  is  undertaking  to  found  a  National  University  in 
this  country  and  is  appropriating  money  to  this  end. 

Besides  these  organizations,  which  are  all  on  a  more  or  Societies  on 
less   anti-clerical  basis,  there  are  societies  often  much 
larger  organized   on  a   church   basis,   Roman   Catholic, 
Greek  Catholic  (Uniate)  and  Orthodox,  and  among  the 
Slovaks  an  Evangelical  Union  numbering  8000  members. 

The  main  life  of  these  societies  is  naturally  in  the  local  The  life  of 
organizations  or  lodges,  about  which  the  social  life  of 
the  group  tends  to  centre,  especially  among  the  free 
thinkers,  to  whom  their  society  largely  stands  in  lieu 


382        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  a  church.  Many  have  handsome  buildings  of  their 
own.  Here  there  are  usually  a  restaurant  (full  of  the 
smell  of  beer  and  smoke,  but  entirely  respectable,  and 
frequented  by  family  parties),  a  large,  well-equipped 
gymnasium,  perhaps  a  library,  committee  rooms  of 
course,  and,  more  important  than  all  the  rest,  a  large 
hall  for  meetings,  lectures,  dances,  concerts  and  last  but 
not  least,  theatricals.  Singing  and  choral  societies, 
often  with  picturesque,  reminiscent  names,  are  many. 
The  Polish  Singers'  Alliance  counts  about  1,000  mem 
bers. 

Gymnastic  The  Sokols,  which  correspond  to  the  German  "Tur- 
nerbunds"  or  gymnastic  societies,  are  as  popular  and 
widespread  as  they  are  desirable.  They  give  oppor 
tunity  for  exercise  dignified  by  a  sense  of  the  relation 
between  good  physical  condition  and  readiness  for 
service  to  one's  country.  Women  and  children,  as 
well  as  the  men,  have  their  own  divisions,  classes  and 
uniforms,  and  the  Sokol  exhibitions  are  important  and 
very  pretty  social  events.  In  Prague,  in  the  summer  of 
1906,  the  Bohemian  Sokols  had  an  anniversary  interna 
tional  meet,  at  which  the  American  societies  were  also 
represented,  and  performed  evolutions,  literally  in  their 
thousands,  in  the  open  air. 

Drama  Theatricals,  whether  given  in  some  local  hall  or  in  a 

regular  theatre  hired  for  the  occasion,  are,  as  in  Europe, 
a  f  a-vorite  -  employment  ior  -Sunday  ~af  ternoona,.£ir_^\:e- 
»w  nings.  ^..Classic  pieces,  both  literary  and  operatic,  are 
much  enjoyed;  for  instance,  nmon.Lc  the-  Bohemians, 
Smetana's  opera,  The  Bartered  Bride,  is  often  given.  On 
the  other  hand,  one  will  see  a  very  simple  spontaneous 
little  exhibition  given  with  the  greatest  abandon  and 
delight  by  a  club  of  hard -worked,  elderly  women,  whose 
triumphs  are  hugely  enjoyed  by  their  families  and 
neighbors.  It  is  an  especial  pleasure  to  them  to  repro 
duce  the  pretty  costumes  of  their  old-world  youth. 
Worthy  of  especial  mention  are  the  club,  called  Snaha 
(Endeavor),  of  Bohemian  professional  women  in  Chicago, 


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LIBERTY 


TITLES  OF  SOME  OF  THE  SLAVIC  NEWSPAPERS  PUBLISHED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       383 

and  the  clubs  organized  for  reading  and  study  among  the 
Socialists  of  different  nationalities. 

Closely  connected  with  the  societies  are  the  news-  The  Slavic 
papers,  which  also  have  attained  a  surprising  develop-  press 
ment  here.     Among  the  Slovaks,  and  perhaps  among  * 
some  other  nationalities,  the  circulation  of  papers  in  their    f 
own  language  is  greater  in  America  than  it  is  at  home-    , 
where  the  press    of  a  discontented  nationality  has  to 
meet  every  sort  of  political  hindrance.*     Ofj-dajly  papers 
t-f^ 


Croatians  and  Slovenians  one  each.  The  number  of 
weeklies  is  much  larger,  the  Poles  heading  the  list  with 
fifty-four.  In  Poland  (German,  Russian  and  Austrian) 
the  Polish  press  issues  the  large  number  of  657  papers, 
some  appearing  two  and  three  times  a  day. 

The  Slavic-American  press  represents,  of  course, 
very  divergent  points  of  view.  Many  of  the  papers  are 
conducted  by  priests  for  purposes  of  edification,  some 
are  political,  of  which  a  part  are  labor  and  socialist 
sheets,  and  a  substantial  number  find  their  raison  d'etre 
and  support  as  organs  of  certain  of  the  societies.  Of  this 
type  are  Zgoda,  organ  of  the  Polish  National  Alliance, 
with  a  circulation  of  about  55,000,  or  the  Organ  Bratstva, 
organ  of  the  C.  S.  P.  S.,  which  is  published  by  the  Supreme 
Lodge  of  the  society  at  the  rate  of  forty  cents  a  month  to 
each  member,  and  which  prints  at  the  beginning  of  each 
month  the  list  of  deaths  and  the  consequent  assessment. 

Another  feature  which  gives  these  papers  their  hold  is  ] 
the  news  which  they  bring  to  homesick  exiles  of  happen-  \ 
ings,  big  and  little,  in  the  old  country.     One  often  finds  > 
in  them  more  and  better  European  political  intelligence 
than  in  our  first  class  papers,  and  on  the  other  hand,  no 
village  occurrence  is  too  small  to  be  reported.     Especially 
in  Slovak  papers  I  have  noticed  the  columns  of  quaint 
individual  happenings,  arranged  county  by  county. 

*  The  figures  furnished  me  by  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Rovnianek 
of  Pittsburgh,  show  twelve  Slovak  papers  published  in  America 
with  a  combined  circulation  of  112,500,  and  twenty  published 
in  Hungary,  with  a  combined  circulation  of  48,300. 


384        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Some  of  these  publications,  especially  the  monthlies, 
are  literary  reviews,  others  are  comic  sheets,  while 
others  again  serve  special  interests,  as  for  instance  the 
Sokol  papers,  the  Polish  Harmoma,  the  Polsky  Farmer 
and  the  Bohemian  Hospodar  (Farmer). 

One  paper,  the  Zenske  Listy  of  Chicago,  is  the  organ  of 
a  woman's  society,  and  is  printed  as  well  as  edited  by 
women.  It  is  not  devoted  to  "beauty  lessons"  and 
"household  hints,"  but  to  efforts  toward  woman's 
suffrage  and  the  "uplifting  of  the  mental  attitude  of 
working  women."  Its  6000  subscribers  include  dis 
tinguished  Bohemians  all  over  the  country,  men  as  well 
as  women. 

Church  or-         If  the  spontaneous  and  luxuriant  growth  of  private 

gamzation      organizations   among   the   Slavs    in    America  is   a    sur 

prising  fact,  it  can  of  course  be  no  surprise  that  they 

organize,  or  are  organized,  for  jeligious  purposes  in  this 


oman  Catholics  are  of  course  the_j,argest  group, 
and  they"  Hnsl"  their  OTCTrTrluTcTf,  the  same  here  as  at 
home,  already  established  and  prepared  to  welcome  them 
to  its  familiar  services.  The  Protestants,  who  are  per 
haps  a  fourth  among  the  Slovaks,  a  small  percentage 
among  the  Bohemians,  and  negligible  among  the  other 
Slavs,  have  got  into  touch,  more  or  less,  with  the  corre 
sponding  churches  here,  which  are  willing  and  eager  to 
help  them  to  establish  and  extend  their  organizations. 

The  Orthodox  church  under  the  Holy  Synod  of  Russia 
has  some  fifty  churches  in  the  country  outside  of  Alaska, 
where  there  are  as  many  more,  not  counting  the  Servian 
mission,  the  Syro-  Arabian  mission,  and  sixteen  churches 
in  Canada.  Not  only  —  nor  indeed  mainly  —  Russians 
make  up  these  congregations,  though  they  are  subsidized 
from  St.  Petersburg.  The  priests,  often  very  able  men, 
are  carrying  on  an  active  propaganda  among  the  border 
land  peoples,  and  especially  among  the  Uniates  or  United 
Greek  Catholics,  who  occupy  a  curious  intermediate 
position,  as  has  been  already  explained.  This  propa- 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       385 

ganda  seems  to  have  had  considerable  success  among 
Little  Russians  (Ruthenians)  and  Slovaks.  In  Minne 
apolis  I  was  interested  to  find  among  the  Little  Russians 
a.Uniate  church  which  had  gone  over  bodily  from  Rome 
to  Russian  Orthodoxy.  The  Bulgarians  are  Greek 
Orthodox,  but  independently  organized  under  the  Bul 
garian  Church.  In  Table  28  an  attempt  is  made  to  bring 
together  the  facts  as  to  the  different  national  groups  by 
denominations. 

A  condition  in  America  which  doubtless  strikes  as  Separation 
strange  all  these  newcomers  equally,  and  which  it  takes 
them  some  time  to  understand,  is  the  disassociation 
here  of  church  and  state.  To  some  this  comes  with  a 
grateful  sense  of  relief,  as  for  instance,  to  the  Bohemian 
free-thinker.  On  the  other  hand,  the  impression  that 
the  country  makes  seems  to  be  the  reverse  of  irreligious. 
"The  American  nation  is  a  believing  nation,"  says 
Father  Sustersic  in  his  Slovenian  guide,  "  Poduk  Rojakom 
Slovencem,"  and.  he  cites  the  fact  that  Congress  is  opened 
with  prayer,  and  the  motto  In  God  we  trust  on  our  coins. 
OLaourse,  the  independence  of  church  and  state  means  to 
the  newcomers  the  unaccustomed  burden  of  building  their 
own  churches  and  meeting  all  the  cost  of  maintaining 
their  services.  In  general,  these  new  demands  seem  to 
make  for  more  devotion  rather  than  for  less,  and  it  is 
astonishing  to  see  the  number  and  magnificence  of  the 
churches  with  which  these  migrant  laborers  have  sown 
the  land  in  so  few  years.  A  little  mining  city,  like 
Hazleton,  Pennsylvania,  will  often  have  five  or  six 
Slavic  churches,  representing  different  nationalities  and 
sects.  In  cities  like  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  Cleveland  and 
Detroit,  and  even  in  quite  small  places  also,  one  finds 
Gothic  and  Renaissance  edifices  of  great  size,  elaborate 
ness  and  evident  expense,  and  sometimes  of  much 
beauty.* 

*  While  this  is  in  press  I  hear  of  the  dedication  of  a  Polish 
church  in  Ware,  Massachusetts,  to  build  which  $60,000  is  said 
to  have  been  raised  in  less  than  three  years.  See  also  page  230. 

25 


386 


SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


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388        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  Roman  Among  the  Slavic  Roman  Catholics  the  Poles  easily 
Catholics  !  sta^Z3rsT7-b€4±Linji.umbers  and'in  zeal.  As  has  already 
been  explained  (page  125)  they,  like  the  Irish,  have  been 
so  situated  historically,  that  their  political  and  religious 
antagonisms  coincide,  intensifying  both.  The  schismatic 
Russian  tyrant,  the  heretic  Swedish  invader,  and  the 
Protestant  Prussian  oppressor  with  his  hated  schools — 
all  have  tended  to  make  devotion  to  church  and  country 
one  indistinguishable  sentiment.  To  people  so  minded, 
the  situation  in  America  was  a  strangely  confusing  one. 
They  found  the  Catholic  church  in  this  country,  at  least 
as  they  came  into  contact  with  it,  practically  an  institu 
tion  of  the  Irish,  and  the  Irish  have  too  generally  shown 
themselves  contemptuous  of  "foreigners,"  and  have  not 
always  earned  for  themselves  the  love  of  other  classes 
of  immigrants.  But  apart  from  any  such  influence,  the 
natural  desire  to  have  a  priest  of  their  own  tongue  and 
traditions  would  have  made  itself  felt.  Not  only  the 
Poles,  but  other  national  groups  of  Roman  Catholics, 
form  churches  of  their  own  just  as  soon  as  they  can. 
They  may  go  for  a  time  to  the  "Irish  Catholic"  church, 
but  it  is  hard  to  hold  them  there  or  in  any  other  church 
not  of  their  own  people.  In  a  certain  Colorado  mining 
settlement  full  of  Roman  Catholics  (Slovenians,  Mexi 
cans,  Italians,  Slovaks),  the  only  Catholic  church  was  a 
little  adobe  building,  where  mass  was  served  at  intervals 
by  a  Spanish-speaking  priest.  I  found  it  full  of  kneeling 
Mexicans,  their  heads  bare  or  covered  with  black  mantil 
las;  but  of  all  the  other  Catholics  in  the  place,  I  saw  only 
one  person,  a  devout  old  German  woman  known  to  every 
one  in  the  camp  as  "Grandma."  The  religious  appeal 
could  not  make  itself  felt  through  the  racial  barriers. 

Besides  this  instinctive  segregation  there  has  been  a 
good  deal  of  friction  and  discontent  as  to  ecclesiastical 
administration  and  office.  Until  a  short  time  ago  the 
Poles,  in  spite  of  their  numbers  and  zeal,  had  not  been 
able  to  secure  the  appointment  of  a  single  Polish  bishop, 


SLAVIC  CHURCHES  OF  ONE  MINING  TOWN 

1.  Slovak  Roman  Catholic.      2.   Lithuanian  Roman  Catholic.     3.   Slovak  Lutheran.     4.  Polish 
Roman  Catholic.      5.   Greek  Catholic.      6.   Greek  Orthodox 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       389 

while  the  much  smaller  group   of  the  Slovenians,   for 
instance,  had  had  five  bishops.* 

A  curious  and  unexpected  phenomenon,  probably  not  Divisions  in 
unrelated  to  all  this,  has  been  the  occurrence  of  a  Polish  the  cnurches 
schism  and  the  formation  here  of  a  so-called  "Polish 
National  Church,"  or  Independent  Polish  Church,  which 
in  1906  was  said  to  number  thirteen  churches,  but  which 
Dr.  Peter  Roberts  reports,  in  September,  1909,  as  having 
90  churches.  Quite  apart  from  this  movement,  there  is 
another  very  interesting  ferment  at  work  in  the  Polish 
churches.  Every  newspaper  reader  in  districts  where 
there  are  many  Poles,  must  have  frequently  run  across 
paragraphs  like  the  following: 

"WESTFIELD  PRIEST  SUES  PARISHIONERS. 
"Westfield,  Sept.  20. — As  a  result  of  dissensions  that  have 
arisen  in  the  Holy  Trinity  Parish  here,  twenty  suits  in  action  of 
tort  alleging  slander  and  conspiracy  to  slander  have  been  brought 
by  Rev.  X.  Y.  against  leading  Poles  of  this  town.  In  addition 
to  these  suits  there  are  four  others  entered  in  the  Superior  Court 
by  Father  X.  Y.,  the  whole  number  aggregating  $40,000.  So 
serious  have  been  the  disagreements  that  during  the  services  last 
Sunday  the  entire  police  force  was  obliged  to  be  present  at  all 
services  to  prevent  a  riot  when  the  dissenting  faction  made  an 
attempt  to  collect  the  funds  of  the  church,  independent  of  the 
regular  collectors  appointed  by  Father  X.  Y." 

Apparently  these  oft-recurring  clashes  have  no  doc 
trinal  significance.  Rather,  they  are  an  effort  toward 
liberty  and  self-government,  embodying  itself,  like  the 
historic  struggles  of  the  English,  in  the  shape  of  a  conten 
tion  as  to  who  shall  control  the  purse  strings,  and  doubt 
less  due  to  the  new  financial  responsibility  of  the  laity 
in  an  unestablished  church.  A  priest  may  have  been 
used  to  take  with  his  people  a  tone  of  absolute  authority 
which  they  are  led  by  all  the  influences  of  American  life, 
and  perhaps  not  least  by  the  sight  of  the  freer  relation  of 
American  priests  with  their  flocks,  to  resent.  Then 
they  hear,  it  may  be,  of  a  priest,  originally  a  poor  man, 
*For  facts  which  help  to  explain  this  anomaly  see  page  233. 


SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

dying  and  leaving  a  private  fortune  to  relatives.  They 
themselves,  spurred  on  by  the  priest,  arrange  a  church 
entertainment  to  help  pay  off  the  church  debt.  They 
spare  no  pains  and  are  apparently  successful,  but  the 
priest  refuses  to  let  the  church  trustees  know  how  the 
balance  stands,  or  to  give  any  account  of  receipts  and 
expenditures  in  general.  They  insist,  and  it  leads  to 
an  open  break.  The  priest  comes  to  morning  mass  and 
finds  himself  locked  out  of  his  "own  church"  by  his 
church  officers.  He  then  calls  in  the  police  to  force  an 
entrance,  and  the  American  newspaper  gives  the  affair 
a  paragraph  that  makes  it  appear  mere  rowdyism  or 
irreligion,  which  it  is  very  far  from  being. 

The  free-  Among  the  Bohemians  the  religious  situation  is  pe- 

movement  culiar  and  deeply  interesting.  Its  roots  lie  deep  in 
Bohemian  religious  history.  The  reformation  movement 
of  Huss  and  his  followers  having  been  stamped  out  in 
blood  after  1620,  the  Catholicism  which  Bohemia  was 
forced  to  accept  was  apt  to  be  lukewarm  when  it  was  not 
merely  nominal. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  the  liberal  movement  of  the 
forties  had  a  religious  as  well  as  a  political  side,  and  an 
intense  reaction  against  clericalism  and  dogma  set  in. 
In  the  free  air  of  America,  and  under  the  influence  of 
Robert  Ingersoll  and  the  works  of  Thomas  Paine  and 
Herbert  Spencer,  this  resulted  not  merely  in  a  wide 
spread  ferment  of  ideas,  but  in  organized  and  aggressive 
propaganda.  Under  the  onslaught,  Bohemian  Catholi 
cism  acquired  a  new  vigor,  there  was  bitterness  on  both 
sides,  and  Bohemians  in  this  country  were  split  into  two 
antagonistic  parties.  As  has  been  said  already,  the  so 
ciety  known  as  the  C.  S.  P.  S.  came  to  be  a  free-thinking 
organization,  and  its  lodges  in  some  degree  represent 
congregations.  They  frequently  carry  on  free-thought 
schools,  where  on  Sunday  mornings,  Saturday  afternoons, 
and  other  leisure  times,  the  children  can  be  trained  in 
Bohemian  grammar  and  history,  and  in  the  views  of  the 
free-thinkers.  For  this  purpose  a  catechism  has  been 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       391 

written.  There  is  also  a  profoundly  pathetic  little  hand 
book  of  addresses, — they  can  hardly  be  called  services, — 
for  use  at  their  funerals.*  The  funerals  are  often  con 
ducted  by  the  president  or  other  member  of  the  lodge  of 
the  deceased;  in  the  women's  lodges  by  the  women  for 
women. 

As  far  as  an  outsider  can  judge,  this  movement  is 
rapidly  losing  momentum.  It  is  difficult  to  keep  the 
interest  and  enthusiasm  of  the  young  people.  They  find 
little  to  feed  on  in  teachings  so  largely  merely  negative ; 
nothing  in  their  experience  answers  to  their  parents' 
rancor  against  the  corrupt  side  of  priestcraft  as  they  had 
seen  it  in  Austria,  and  the  ties  of  race  and  speech,  which 
are  so  powerful  a  bond  among  the  first  generation, 
influence  the  later  born  much  less.  The  free-thought 
movement  was  essentially  religious,  in  spite  of  the 
crudity  of  its  materialist  philosophy  and  of  its  propaganda 
in  favor  of  atheism;  it  was  the  work  of  men,  for  the  most 
part  not  of  the  most  highly  privileged  class  in  respect 
of  opportunities  for  culture,  but  to  whom  questions  of 
religious  belief  were  the  supremely  important  and  the 
supremely  interesting  thing  in  life,  and  to  whom  intel 
lectual  sincerity  and  courage  were  the  breath  of  their 
nostrils.  As  a  Bohemian  doctor  in  New  York  once  said 
to  me,  "Two  Bohemians  cannot  meet  without  beginning 
to  talk  of  religion."  The  tone  of  their  thought  at  its  best 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  following  quotation  from  a 
lecture  on  "  Free-Thought  in  America,"  by  Anton  Jurka: 
"Let  us  be  strong.  Let  us  firmly  believe  that  we  are 
maintaining  the  position  which  answers  most  loyally  to 
the  nobility  of  Nature.  Let  us,  according  to  our  strength, 
draw  from  deeds  both  past  and  present,  faith  in  a  better 
future,  and  let  us  help  to  build  this  better  future  by 
faith,  hope  and  love;  by  faith  in  the  noble  final  goal  of 
mankind,  by  hope  that  humanity  will  reach  its  goal  and 
will  be  thoroughly  imbued  with  a  culture  and  enlighten 
ment  not  yet  dreamed  of  by  us;  with  a  love  pure, 
*  See  Bibliography  under  Free-thought. 


3Q2        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

self-sacrificing,   to  Nature,   to  man,   to  humanity  as  a 
whole." 

Now  that  the  critical  and  destructive  work  is  done, 
fhere  seems  to  be  a  great  deal  of  mere  indifference  to  all 
religious  matters,  and,  as  one  hears,  a  good  deal  of  self- 
indulgent,  rather  gross  living  on  the  part  of  some  who 
are  "free-thinkers  as  much  as  they  are  anything."  On 
the  other  hand,  one  also  hears  of  the  children  of  the 
old  fighters  for  free-thought  joining  one  or  another  of 
the  Protestant  churches,  partly  perhaps  from  social 
reasons,  partly,  doubtless,  from  a  hunger  which  negations 
could  not  satisfy.  In  one  instance  I  hear  that  the  free 
thinkers,  as  such,  have  affiliated  themselves  with  Uni- 
tarianism. 
Socialism  j  An  element  of  life  which,  if  not  universal  like  religion, 

F  is  common  to  all  civilized  countries,  is  the  modern  in- 
/i  dustrial  system — the  system  under  which  capital,  labor 
//  and  science  produce  an  amount  of  wealth  unknown  to 
history,  but  at  the  cost  of  enormous  waste  of  life, 
health  and  happiness.  The  man  who  is  conscious  of  this 
as  a  problem  calls  himself  for  the  most  part  a  socialist, 
and  such  a  man,  when  he  comes  to  America  from  Europe, 
finds  himself  in  a  very  different  position  from  the  nation 
alistic  patriot;  he  does  not  leave  his  problem,  his  ideal 
aim  in  life,  behind  him.  The  essential  features  of  the 
new  situation,  so  far  as  they  are  industrial,  not  political, 
are  already  familiar.  He  does  not  feel  himself  an  out 
sider  with  nothing  to  do  but  to  criticize;  on  the  contrary, 
he  is  consciously  one,  not  with  his  own  little  group 
alone,  but  with  working  people  everywhere,  and  he  finds 
his  old  task  here. 

A  Of  the  Slavs  who  come  to  us,  a  comparatively  small 
part  ^xe  from  industrial  centres  where  these  ideas  are  in 

I  the  aiy,  -Thftrp  is,  however,  a  socialistic  contingent 
among  them,  especially  among  the  Poles  and  Bohemians, 
though  by  no  means  comparable  to  that  supplied  by 
Germans  and  Jews.  In  this  country  I  judge  that  their 
numbers  do  not  grow  as  fast  as  one  might  expect.  Ac- 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       393 

quisition  of  property  makes  for  conservatism,  and  the 
sense  of  opportunity  and  at  least  nominal  political 
equality  makes  for  individualism.  Sometimes  this 
individualism  has  a  more  theoretical  basis,  and  is  a 
legacy  of  old  struggles  against  oppressive  governments. 
A  Pole  or  a  Bohemian  has  at  least  more  excuse  than  an 
Englishman  for  transferring  his  jealousy  of  government 
as  an  alien  and  selfish  power  to  a  country  where  all 
authority  is,  or  should  be,  his  own  representative  and 
agent.  I  was  talking  with  a  Texas  Bohemian,  son  of  a 
man  self-exiled  for  the  sake  of  liberty,  an  editor,  judge 
and  school  committeeman,  and  I  said  something  of  the 
need  of  compulsory  education  laws.  Instantly  his  eyes 
flashed,  and  his  voice  rang:  "That  would  be  tyranny." 

As  to  the  existence  or  extent  of  that  state  of  acute  ^  Anarchism 
social  exasperation  which  is  what  is  popularly  meant  by  » 
anarchism  and  which,  at  the  time  of  the  assassination  of 
President  McKinley,  appeared  to  exist  among  a  section    \ 
of  the  Poles,  I  can  unfortunately  give  no  information,  as 
I  have  never  come  across  any  traces  of  it  or  references  to 
it. 

Where  the  next  generation  will   stand  on  all  these  fThe  next 
matters  it  is  hard  to  forecast,  but  I  suspect  that  it  will   ?eneration 
adopt    the    same    standpoints  as  Americans  under  the  j 
same  conditions.     A  very  radical  American  friend  values 
our  immigrants  as  good  future  revolutionary  material; 
the  younger  generation,  he  says,  grow  up  quite  emanci 
pated  from  the  old,  narrow  ideas  of  their  parents  and 
equally  free  from  the  political  and  social  traditions  that 
hypnotize  Americans.     My  impression  is  that  this  view 
was  suggested  to  him  by  experience  among  the  Jews  of 
the  East  Side,  and  that  it  would  be  more  nearly  true 
among  that  race  of  thinkers  than  elsewhere.     Neverthe 
less,  the  Slav  seems  to  share  with  the  Frenchman  and 
the  Jew  the  power  to  think  out  a  logical  theory  and  to 
carry  that  theory  into  action. 

American  politics  for  the  most  part  have  not  been  Politics 
such  as  to  command  great  interest  apart  from  purely  , 


394        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

local  considerations.  Since  the  days  of  the  anti-slavery 
movement,  which  enlisted  the  generous  sympathies  of 
1  the  old  generation  of  liberal  immigrants,  our  politics 
have  involved  few  questions  of  wide  significance  with 
the  exception  of  some  of  our  social-economic  issues. 
The  educated  European  remains  on  the  outside  of  Ameri 
can  life  quite  as  much  because  it  is  provincial  as  because 
he  is.  Consequently,  unless  he  is  made  over  into  a 
^  complete  American,  the  foreigner _  is Jik©ly-te-4ake^part 
in  our  politics  only  as  a  matter  of  business,  which  is  to' 
say  corruptly.  Among  the  simple-minded  yet  shrewd 
fellows  at  the  bottom  this  is  often  quite  naively  and 
innocently  the  case.  A  librarian  who  is  a  good  friend 
of  the  various  nationalities  who  work  in  her  town,  asked 
the  Poles  who  were  coming  in  and  out  of  the  library  on 
one  election  day  what  they  were  voting  for.  They 
replied  cheerfully,  pleased  that  she  took  an  interest  in 
their  affairs  and  that  they  had  so  good  a  market  to 
report,  "For  two  dollars."  The  whole  situation  is  one 
which  naturally  lends  itself  to  log-rolling  and  political 
trading.  When  there  are  groups  of  men  with  their  full 
numerical  share  of  political  power,  with  no  use  to  which 
they  want  to  put  it,  and  full  of  clannish  feeling,  it  is 
very  easy  for  a  leader  of  their  own  kind  to  "vote"  them 
as  a  unit.  If  he  is  bid  for  by  the  offer  of  some  petty 
office,  it  gratifies  not  only  him  but  his  whole  group,  who 
feel  themselves  vicariously  honored  in  the  person  of  the 
candidate. 

While  the  conviction  that  American  politics  are  corrupt 
draws  in  some  men,  it  keeps  out  others;  as  a  Slovak 
minister  said  to  me,  "My  people  are  not  interested  in 
politics;  they  say,  'Das  ist  mehr  Geldsache'  "  (that  is 
mostly  a  matter  of  money,  anyway). 

Party  affil-          As  to  political  affiliations,  both  parties  count  Slavs  as 
lations        _    members.     In  the  ante-bellum  days  the  slavery  issue 
tended  to  draw  Bohemians  and  Poles,  both  of  whom 
supplied  gallant  soldiers  to  the  Union,  into  the  Republi 
can  ranks.     It  is  interesting  to  find  that  the  Poles  voted 


THE    ORGANIZED    LIFE    OF    SLAVS    IN    AMERICA       395 

for  Grant  in  1872,  the  first  election  in  which  they  were 
notably  interested,  not  only  because  of  his  war  record, 
but  because  he  recognized  the  French  Republic  during 
the  Prussian  war,  while  his  opponent  Greeley  was  sup 
posed  to  have  favored  Austria  in  Italy  and  Germany 
in  Alsace-Lorraine.  Another  reason  for  Republicanism 
has  been  the  simple  and  intelligible  one  that  the  Irish 
were  Democrats.  On  the  other  hand,  in  Chicago  both 
Bohemians  and  Poles  are  said  to  be  "normally  Demo-  ) 
crats,"  and  the  explanation  given  by  Miss  Masaryk  in 
the  case  of  the  Bohemians  is  that  Republicanism  meant 
the  Administration,  and  that  Bohemians  were  readily 
led  by  their  past  experience  to  join  the  opposition. 

How  far  Slavs  in  this  country  are  naturalized  it  is  Citizenship 
impossible  to  say,  the  census  figures  on  the  subject  being 
unusable  in  this  case.     In  Hadley,  Massachusetts,  as  I 
have    already    stated,    while    47    Poles    own    property 
and   123   more  pay  a  poll  tax,   only  two  are  natural 
ized,  and  I  judged  that  the  Americans  were  far  from  . 
desiring  to  have  more  become  voters.     The  policy  of 
the  more  enlightened  Slavic  leaders,   on  the  contrary,    ' 
is  to  urge  citizenship  and,  as  has  been  said,  one  at  least    i 
of  the  national  societies  requires  it. 

In  many  places  the  Slavic  vote  is  an  important  con-  Slavs  in  of- 
sideration.     In    the    Illinois    state    campaign    of    1906,  ^e 
both  Republicans  and  Democrats  nominated  a  Pole  for      * 
the  office  of  state  treasurer.     One  of  these  nominees  had 
already  served  in  Chicago  as  alderman  and  as  city  at 
torney.     A  number  of  Poles  have  sat  in  state  legislatures, 
both  in  the  lower  chamber  and,  in  one  instance  at  least, 
in  the  State  senate,   and  there  is  a  pretty  story  of  a 
Wisconsin    Bohemian   whose    desk   in    the    House   was 
reserved  for  him  on  his  election  as  a  sort  of  family  per 
quisite,  or  rather  as  a  courteous  recognition  of  the   ser 
vices  (if  I  remember  the  circumstances  rightly)  of  his 
father  and  brother,  who  had  preceded   him  in    office. 
Mr.  Sabath,  a  congressman  from  Illinois,  is  said  to  be  a 
Bohemian. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  QUESTION  OF  ASSIMILATION 

Forced  as-         Assimilation  is  much  talked  of  in  the  United  States. 
emulation       Itg  Desirability  is  so  taken  for  granted  that  any  and  every 
method    of   hastening   it    may    seem   acceptable,    until 
something  brings  to  our  attention  what  bad  company 
this  very  assimilation  keeps.     Wherever  in  the  world 
there  are  people  crying,  "We  are  oppressed,"  there  you 
are    likely    to    find    another    set   of   people   protesting, 
"This  is  no  oppression;    it  is  assimilation — benevolent 
assimilation."     The    shout   of    "Islam   or   the   sword," 
wrought  probably  the  most  rapid  assimilation  on  record. 
Modern    de-       It  is  a  commonplace  of  history  that  while  the  consti- 
o7  national     tution  °f  centralized  states  on  a  territorial  basis,  putting 
feeling  an  end  to  feudal  disorganization,  was  the  characteristic 

accomplishment  of  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  the  active  ferment  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  been  the  principle  of  nationalities.  Each 
group  with  a  racial  or  cultural  unity,  and  above  all  with 
the  type  and  sign  of  this,  a  common  speech,  has  been 
eagerly  struggling  toward  autonomy,  or  at  least  toward 
the  right  to  develop  along  its  own  lines  .and  to  use  its 
own  language. 

Everywhere  this  nationalistic  movement  has  revealed 
fresh  human  treasures  and  called  forth  some  of  the  rarest 
and  finest  blossoms  of  the  spirit  of  mankind.  In  litera 
ture  it  has  given  us  highly  differentiated  types  of  new 
and  poignant  beauty,  doubly  welcome  in  a  leveling  and 
cosmopolitan  age.  Folk  lore,  art  and  philology  have 
also  felt  its  vivifying  touch.  It  has  evoked  the  most 
intense  devotion  and  been  the  cause  of  the  most  heroic 
sacrifices. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  has  divided  peoples  who  before 

396 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  397 

were  hardly  conscious  of  differences,  and  has  narrowed 
men's  sympathies  to  their  own  little  group, — in  striking 
contrast  to  the  cosmopolitan  humanitarianism  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  It  has  lighted  indescribable  fires 
of  bitterness.  Perhaps  no  moral  agony  is  greater  than 
to  see  the  language  and  tradition  of  one's  fathers,  one's 
spiritual  birthright,  strangled  to  death  by  a  contemptu 
ous  rival.  The  Pole  in  Germany,  the  Slovak  in  Hungary, 
the  little  Russian  in  Russia — and  how  many  more — all 
feel  the  hand  at  their  throats.  It  is  cruel  enough  in  a 
case  like  that  of  the  Germans  of  the  Baltic  provinces  of 
Russia ;  though  they  see  their  children  forcibly  Russified, 
yet  they  know  that  across  the  border  Germany  is  con 
tinuing  her  progress  without  thought  of  check.  To  the 
Slovak,  who  knows  that  if  his  idiom  becomes  obsolete 
in  Hungary  it  nevermore  can  take  its  place  among  the 
living  tongues  of  men,  what  must  it  be  to  see  his  school 
funds  confiscated,  his  press  harried  and  his  children 
systematically  taught  to  despise  the  language  and 
nationality  which  he  loves  with  a  Slav's  obstinate 
intensity? 

With  these  things  in  mind  one  turns  to  the  United  The  Amer- 
States  and  finds  there  a  process  of  Americanization  lcan 
going  on  which  must  be  seen  to  be  comprehended, 
and  which  becomes  the  more  impressive  the  more  it  is 
studied.  Here  are  over  75,000,000  people,  representa 
tives  of  an  indefinite  variety  of  human  stocks,  yet  present 
ing  in  general  an  almost  painful  degree  of  uniformity. 
For  local  color,  the  short  story  writer  must  generally 
have  recourse  to  sheltered  and  backward  communities, 
to  frontier  outposts  or  to  colonies  of  recent  newcomers — 
all  now  rapidly  losing  their  peculiarities.  It  reminds  one 
of  the  old  fable  of  the  traveler's  cloak;  the  wind  which 
boasted  that  he  could  easily  remove  it  only  made  him  hug 
it  the  closer  to  him;  in  the  warmth  of  the  sun  he  felt 
it  a  burden,  and  voluntarily  cast  it  aside. 

Yet  even  in  the  United  States  assimilation  is  not  quite 
without  signs  of  difficulty  and  apprehension  and  con- 


398         SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

flicting  purposes — signs  of  dread  and  jealousy,  on  the 
part  of  Americans,  of  the  alien  influences  brought  in  by 
the  streams  of  newcomers,  and,  on  the  part  of  the 
immigrants,  of  jealousy  of  American  influence  and  dread 
of  Americanizing  pressure. 

A  Polish  One  comes  sometimes  with  a  sense  of  shock  to  a  reali 

zation  of  points  of  view  strange  to  one's  own.  Take, 
for  instance,  a  conversation  that  I  once  had  with  a 
Polish-American  priest.  I  had  said  something  about 
"Americans,"  that  they  were  not  apt  to  be  interested  in 
Polish  history,  or  something  of  the  sort.  Instantly  he 
was  on  fire. 

"You  mean  English-Americans,"  he  said.  "You 
English  constantly  speak  as  if  you  were  the  only  Ameri 
cans,  or  more  Americans  than  others.  The  History  of 
the  United  States,  published  by  Scribners,  is  written 
wholly  from  the  English  point  of  view,  and  that  is  very 
common.  Even  such  a  great  paper  as  the  Chicago 
Tribune  is  written  by  men  who  are  just  over  from  Eng 
land,  and  who  yet  speak  of  foreigners  when  they  mean 
any  Americans  but  English.  For  instance,  in  a  recent 
bank  failure  they  said  that  many  '  foreigners '  would  lose, 
referring  to  German- Americans  and  others  who  had  been 
in  the  country  for  generations.  A  priest  born  in  Balti 
more  of  Italian  parents,  speaking  English  and  Italian 
equally  naturally,  will  see  priests,  new  come  from  Ireland, 
promoted  over  him  because  he  is  a  '  foreigner.' ' 

I  remarked  that  if  I  went  to  Poland  he  would  not 
consider  me  a  Pole. 

"No,  that  is  different,"  was  his  reply.  "America 
was  empty,  open  to  all  comers  alike.  There  is  no  reason 
for  the  English  to  usurp  the  name  of  American.  They 
should  be  called  Yankees  if  anything.  That  is  the  name 
of  English-Americans.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an 
American  nation.  Poles  form  a  nation,  but  the  United 
States  is  a  country,  under  one  government,  inhabited 
by  representatives  of  different  nations.  As  to  the  future, 
I  have,  for  my  part,  no  idea  what  it  will  bring.  I  do 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  399 

not  think  that  there  will  be  amalgamation,  one  race 
composed  of  many.  The  Poles,  Bohemians  and  so 
forth,  remain  such,  generation  after  generation.  Switz 
erland  has  been  a  republic  for  centuries,  but  never  has 
brought  her  people  to  use  one  language.  For  myself,  I 
do  favor  one  language  for  the  United  States,  either  Eng 
lish  or  some  other,  to  be  used  by  every  one,  but  there  is 
no  reason  why  people  should  not  also  have  another 
language ;  that  is  an  advantage,  for  it  opens  more  avenues 
to  Europe  and  elsewhere." 

He  was  indignant  at  the  requirement  of  the  naturaliza 
tion  law  of  1906,  making  a  knowledge  of  English  a  condi 
tion  of  citizenship.  I  advanced  as  an  argument  for  it 
the  fact  that  the  proceedings  of  Congress  are  carried 
on  in  English,  and  that  to  vote  intelligently  a  man  must 
be  able  to  follow  them.  "In  our  Polish  papers,"  he 
said,  "the  Congressional  debates  are  as  fully  reported  as 
in  the  English-American  papers,  and  politics  can  be  as 
intelligently  followed."  I  did  not  feel  that  I  could  urge 
that  many  English-speaking  voters  seek  familiarity 
with  the  debates  in  full  in  the  Congressional  Record. 

The  views  that  I  have  tried  to  reproduce  here  are,  I 
think,  not  typical,  but  they  certainly  suggest  a  recon 
sideration  of  various  questions,  among  others,  "What 
are  Americans?" 

In  a  composite  people  like  the  American,  it  is  inevitable  America  as 
that  the  color  of  the  whole  should  appear  different  to 
those  who  view  it  from  different  points.  The  English 
man  is  apt  to  think  of  the  United  States  as  literally  a 
new  England,  a  country  inhabited  in  the  main  by  two 
classes;  on  the  one  hand  descendants  of  seventeenth 
century  English  colonists,  and  on  the  other  newly  arrived 
foreigners. 

The  continental  European,  on  the  contrary,  is  apt  to 
suffer  from  the  complementary  illusion,  and  to  believe 
that  practically  all  Americans  are  recent  European 
emigrants,  mainly,  or  at  least  largely,  from  his  own 
country.  Frenchmen  have  insisted  to  me  that  a  large 


400       SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

proportion  of  the  United  States  is  French,  and  Germans 
often  believe  that  it  is  mainly  German,  and  that  one  could 
travel  comfortably  throughout  the  United  States  with 
a. knowledge  of  German  alone.  This  is  very  natural. 
A  man  sees  his  own  country-people  flocking  to  America, 
perhaps  partly  depopulating  great  tracts  of  the  father 
land;  he  receives  copies  of  newspapers  in  his  own  lan 
guage  printed  in  America ;  if  he  travels  in  America  he  is 
feted  and  entertained  everywhere  by  his  own  country 
men,  and  is  shown  America  through  their  eyes.  "I 
visited  for  two  weeks  in  Cedar  Rapids  and  never  spoke 
anything  but  Bohemian,"  said  a  Prague  friend  to  me. 
An  Italian  lady  in  Boston  said,  speaking  in  Italian, 
"You  know  in  Boston  one  naturally  gets  so  little  chance 
to  hear  any  English,"  much  as  Americans  make  the  corre 
sponding  complaint  in  Paris  and  Berlin.  On  each  side 
such  exaggerated  impressions  are  very  hard  to  shake  off. 
What  are  the  facts? 

The  compo-       The  figures  were  given  and  the  subject  discussed  in  an- 

American*16  °^ier  connection  (see  pages  4  and  5),  but  it  seems  desir- 

population     able  to  recapitulate  here.     In  1900,  Negroes,  Indians  and 

Mongolians  made  12  per  cent  of  the  population  of  the 

United  States;  foreign  born  white  persons  made  13  per 

cent  more,  native  born  white  persons  of  wholly  or  partly 

foreign  parentage  21  more,  leaving  a  little  over  one-half 

(53  Per  cent)  native  whites  of  native  parentage. 

Of  the  foreign  born  and  their  children,  however,  over 
a  tenth  are  English  in  origin,  and  something  over  a 
third,  including  the  Irish,  are  English  by  inherited 
speech.  On  the  other  hand,  of  the  53  per  cent  of  persons 
of  native  white  parentage,  many  have  non-English  blood, 
some  of  them  little  and  remote,  some  through  all  four 
grandparents. 

During  the  period  in  which  statistics  of  immigration 
have  been  recorded  (i.  e.,  1820-1909),  nearly  27,000,000 
immigrants  have  been  counted  at  our  ports,  of  whom 
the  major  part  have  been  neither  English  nor  English- 
speaking.  But  the  diversity  goes  back,  not  to  1820,  but, 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  401 

as  every  one  knows,  to  the  colonization  of  the  country. 
Some  of  the  settlements  which  occupy  a  place  in  history, 
like  that  of  the  Swedes  in  Delaware,  did  not  contribute 
much  blood  to  the  country,  but  others  did  so ;  and  what 
with  original  non-English  settlements,  and  with  the 
immigration  of  Germans,  Huguenots  and,  above  all,  of 
Scotch-Irish  (movements  which  relatively  to  the  times 
were  very  important),  it  has  been  estimated  that  at  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  fully  one-fifth  of  the  population 
spoke  some  other  language  than  English,  and  that  not 
over  one-half  were  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood. 

Such  an  estimate  is  uncertain,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  publication  of  the  returns  for  the  census  of  1790,6 
now  under  way,  may  give  us  some  new  light;  but  at 
least  the  statement  helps  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  pre- 
Revolutionary  America  was  by  no  means  wholly  English. 

After  the  constitution  of  the  Republic,  whole  popula-   Background 

tions  were  annexed  in  situ,  adding  considerable  non-  and  ^asi 

fe          .  populati 

English  populations — the  Spanish  of  Florida,  the  Span-  English 

ish-Mexicans  of  the  southwest  and  California,  and  the 
French  of  Louisiana,  St.  Louis  and  the  old  Northwest. 
"  But  in  spite  of  all  temptations  to  belong  to  other  na 
tions,"  the  background  and  basis  of  the  population  is 
and  always  has  been  essentially  English. 

It  was  a  group  of  English  colonies  that  united  to  form 
the  Republic.  The  strain  that  has  predominated,  the 
men  that  have  shaped  and  led  the  nation,  have  been 
mainly  English  or  English-speaking,  from  the  men  of 
Virginia  and  Massachusetts  in  the  Revolution,  to  the 
Southerners,  New  Englanders  and  "Yankees"  who 
supplied  the  native  element  in  the  westward  movement. 
The  America  of  John  Smith  and  Cotton  Mather,  of 
George  Washington  and  Samuel  Adams,  of  Emerson, 
Poe  and  Whitman,  of  Lincoln  and  Lee,  of  Sam  Houston 
and  Zebulon  Pike  and  the  "forty-niners"  of  California, 
of  Cyrus  Field  and  Edison,  of  Jay  Gould  and  Morgan,  of 
Joseph  Smith  and  Mrs.  Eddy,  of  President  Eliot  and 
President  Jordan,  of  Aldrich  and  Howells  and  James,  of 
26 


402        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Whistler  and  Sargent — this  is  what  the  world  under 
stands  by  America,  and  it  is  essentially  English  in  blood, 
and  more  so  in  literary  and  political  tradition. 
-  Language  wields  an  influence  beyond  all  calculation, 
and  language  has  tended  to  keep  the  country  open  to 
English  thought,  and  comparatively  inaccessible  to  other 
I  outside  currents.*  Not  only  is  English  generally  spoken 
throughout  the  country,  but  it  is  spoken  with  surprising 
uniformity,  having  much  less  dialectical  variation  than 
the  languages  of  old  countries  like  England  and  Germany, 
France  and  Italy. 

Anew  Yet  granting  all  that  has  been  said  as  to  the  English 

in  the  United  States,  it  remains  true  that  the  other 
elements  which  have  made  a  component  part  of  the 
country  since  the  beginning  have  not  been  either  thrust 
out  by  the  English  or  simply  absorbed  or  altered  over  by 
them  into  their  own  likeness.  There  has  been  thus  far 
an  amalgamation,  a  fusion,  creating  a  new  stock  which 
is  no  longer  English,  but  something  distinctive  and 

*  According  to  the  census  of  1890  persons  unable  to  speak 
English  did  not  amount  to  four  in  a  hundred  of  the  total  popu 
lation  over  ten  years  old,  and  of  this  non-English  speaking 
group  nearly  four-fifths  were  foreign  born.  Among  native 
whites  of  foreign  parentage  the  numbers  sink  to  nine  in  a  thousand , 
among  native  whites  of  native  parentage  to  under  seven  in  a 
thousand,  or  168,149.  This  native  non-English  group  included 
the  Spanish  speaking  population  of  the  Southwest  and  Cali 
fornia,  the  French  speaking  population  of  Louisiana  (white 
and  colored),  some  French  Canadians  of  the  second  generation 
in  New  England  (certainly  under  three  thousand)  and  the  Penn 
sylvania  Dutch. 

It  is  interesting  to  find  that  these  last  decreased  by  more  than 
fifty  per  cent  between  1890  and  1900,  and  this  sudden  decrease 
of  the  non-English  speaking  class  among  a  population  settled 
in  the  country  before  the  Revolution  is  a  surprising  testimony 
to  the  accelerating  force  of  the  tendency  toward  English  speech. 

In  general  the  1900  census  gives  no  information  as  to  inability 
to  speak  English  among  white  persons  of  native  parentage, 
(always  speaking  of  those  over  ten  years  old,)  but  among  foreign 
born  whites  their  proportion  has  fallen  from  15.6  per  cent  in  1890 
to  12.2  per  cent  in  1900  and  among  native  whites  of  foreign  parent 
age  from  9  in  a  thousand  to  6,  showing,  at  every  point  when  we  can 
institute  a  comparison,  a  gain  in  knowledge  of  English  in  spite  of 


the  very  heavy  immigration  of  the  preceding  period. 

For  these  data  see  census  of  1890,  Population,  Part  II,  pages 
Ix-lxv  and  253-277;  and  census  of  1900,  Population.  Vol.  II, 


For  these  data  see  census  of 

-Ixv  and  2  5  3—2  7  7 ;  and  cens 

pages  cxxiii-cxxvii  and  489-501. 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  403 

different, — American.  Even  our  English  speech  is  not 
the  English  of  England.  Our  physique,  our  bearing,  still 
more  our  tone  of  mind  and  spiritual  characteristics  not 
only  are  distinguishable  from  the  English,  but  mark  a 
national  type  as  distinct  perhaps  as  any. 

In  spite  of  my  Polish  interlocutor's  belief  that  America 
is  not  a  nation,  it  has  in  truth  the  deepest  right  to  con 
sider  itself  such.  It  is  an  organic  whole,  inter-sensitive 
through  all  its  parts,  colored  by  one  tradition  and  bound 
together  not  only  by  love  of  one  material  motherland 
but  by  one  conception  of  the  country's  mission  and  of  the 
means — liberty,  enlightenment  and  prosperity — by  which 
that  mission  is  to  be  accomplished. 

Many  Americans  feel  bitterly  that  this  unity  is  now  Is  immigra 
seriously  threatened  by  the  increasing  variety  and  num-  j^°n  ^^p 
ber  of  the  new  contingents  of  immigrants.     In  the  five-  ica? 
year  period  following  1900,  the  immigration  other  than 
English  and  English-speaking  amounted  to  one  in  twenty 
of  the  population  in  1900.*     Moreover,  the  foreign  popu 
lation  is  known  to  multiply  faster  than  the  native  element, 
at  least  in  parts  of  the  country  where  data  have  been  col 
lected,  and  perhaps  generally.     It  is  therefore  clear  that 
as  long   as   conditions   remain  unchanged,  the  relative 
amount  of  old  American  stock  must  progressively  lessen. 

We  say,  as  long  as  conditions  remain  the  same,  but  Immigra- 
any  of  these  conditions  may  change.  For  instance,  on  tlon  Policy 
the  one  hand  the  volume  of  immigration  may  fall  off 
from  economic  causes,  or  it  may  be  checked  by  American 
action.  On  the  other,  the  foreign  element  may  reduce 
its  rate  of  multiplication  to  the  American  rate  or  less 
as  it  becomes  Americanized.  As  regards  the  volume 
of  immigration,  it  is  obvious  that  we  need  not  stand 
passive,  as  before  an  uncontrollable  natural  phenomenon. 
It  stands  open  to  us  to  permit  or  refuse  admission  to 
the  country. 

*  This  is  gross  reckoning  without  allowance  for  emigrants 
returning  to  Europe.  Cf.  pages  250,  294  and  Appendix  XVIII, 
page  463. 


404        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Results  to 
the  race 


Economic 

interests 

govern 


Doubtless  the  most  important  issue  involved  is  the 
racial  one.  But  here  we  are  paralyzed  by  our  compre 
hensive  ignorance  of  the  actual  results  of  race  crossings. 
IMiose  who  should  be  expert  give  the  most  contrary 
opinions.  "  Only  pure  races  are  strong."  "  Only  mixed 
races  are  strong."  "Mixture  within  certain  degrees  of 
unlikeness  is  desirable;  beyond  that  line,  disastrous." 

The  investigations  of  the  Immigration  Commission 
under  Professor  Boas,  as  just  now  reported  in  a  prelim 
inary  way,  appear  to  point  to  an  unexpected  and  very 
rapid  assimilation  of  physical  type  among  the  children 
of  immigrants,  quite  apart  from  racial  intermixture. 

Whatever  the  truth  as  to  national  eugenics,  in  prac 
tice  all  other  considerations  are  dwarfed  by  the  economic 
interests  involved.  The  question  is  and  should  be  dis 
cussed  in  its  physical,  ethical,  humanitarian,  social  and 
political  aspects,  but  it  is  decided,  in  our  present  stage 
of  moral  development,  by  bread  and  butter  considera 
tions,  from  the  point  of  view  of  American  interests. 
But  economic  interests  themselves  diverge  and  conflict. 
So  far  as  the  nation  desires  to  increase  national  produc 
tion,  commercial  prosperity,  dividends  and  rentals,  so 
far  it  favors  the  inflow  of  labor  to  increase  the  product 
of  our  national  "plant," — of  our  land  capital,  and 
directing  energies.  On  the  other  hand,  so  far  as  the 
nation  desires  to  raise  the  standard  of  living  of  the  mass 
of  the  citizens,  to  extend  democracy  within  the  country 
on  economic  and  social  as  well  as  on  political  lines, — in  a 
word,  to  raise  wages  and  increase  the  influence  of  the 
workingman, — so  far  it  is  opposed  to  the  admission  of 
new  and  cheaper  competitors  in  the  labor  market. 

Hitherto  the  first  set  of  interests  has  prevailed,  with 
one  main  exception.  Where,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Chi 
nese,  race  prejudice  has  reinforced  the  economic  interests 
of  the  employe,  those  interests  have  prevailed  and  the 
aliens  have  been  excluded.  Otherwise  the  employer's 
policy  has  prevailed,  subject  to  certain  modifications, — 
to  provisos  as  to  personal  character,  health,  etc.,  which 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  405 

are  qualitatively  valuable  but  negligible  in  a  quantitative 
consideration.  The  same  is  true  of  the  law  against  im 
porting  labor  under  contract,  which  modifies  in  the  in 
terests  of  the  employes  the  terms  under  which  immigrants 
may  enter  the  country,  but  which  is  easily  substantially 
evaded,  does  not  necessarily  cut  down  the  number  of 
arrivals,  and  is  in  several  respects  a  two-edged  weapon. 

In  this  counterpoise  of  conflicting  class  interests  it  is 
conceivable  that  the  views  of  those  who  try  to  consider 
the  interests  of  no  one  class,  of  no  one  nation,  might  turn 
the  balance,  or  at  least  make  themselves  felt  to  some 
effect.  But  the  idealists  differ  among  themselves. 

Some   see  in   the  American   republic  the   trustee  for  Conflicting 


humanity  of  an  experiment  in  democracy,  the  greatest  an 

in  scale,  the  most  favored  in  conditions,  of  which  there 
is  any  hope.  They  believe  the  Anglo-Saxon  to  have 
peculiar  ability  and  tact  in  self-government,  and  they 
see  in  the  dilution  of  this  stock  by  others,  and  in  every 
new  complication  of  the  problem  by  extraneous  difficul 
ties,  a  threat  of  a  world-tragedy  —  the  shipwreck  of  the 
American  enterprise  in  democracy. 

On  the  other  hand,  with  still  wider  horizon  and  still 
more  daring  faith  stand  those  who  see  in  this  enormous 
migration  a  new  advance  in  the  slow  process  of  the 
growth  of  humanity.  They  see  the  newcomers  drawn 
from  layers  of  population  where  pressure  is  greatest  and 
progress  least  possible,  into  situations  where  for  the  first 
time  they  meet  opportunity;  where  they  not  only  "have 
their  chance,"  but  where  they,  and  still  more  their 
children,  do  actually  gain,  not  in  comfort  only,  but  in 
freedom,  thoughtfulness  and  self-respect;  where  with 
all  that  they  lose,  they  on  the  whole  profit  as  men. 
They  see  this  new  freedom,  these  new  demands  on  life, 
together  with  the  skill  and  enterprise  to  make  their 
realization  possible,  this  new  spirit  of  hope  and  progress, 
reacting  in  turn  on  the  old  countries,  helping  them  to 
reach  higher  levels.  At  the  same  time  they  hope  that 
the  newcomers  in  America  will  bring  fresh,  vigorous  blood 


406        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

to  a  rather  sterile  and  inbred  stock,  and  that  they  will 
add  valuable  varieties  of  inheritance  to  a  rather  puritan 
ical,  one-sided  culture  rich  in  middle  class  commonplace, 
but  poor  in  the  power  of  creating  beauty  except  in  the 
one  great  field  of  literature.* 

Before  such  a  vast  world  movement  as  the  modern 
wage  migrations  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  awestruck, 
not  to  realize  how  little  it  is  possible  for  contemporaries 
to  gauge  the  results  and  to  compute  advantages.  In  the 
face  of  this  doubt,  the  burden  of  proof  seems  to  be  on 
those  who  would  interfere,  who  would  turn  back  to  their 
crowded  homelands  the  hordes  who  are  moving  in  the 
direction  of  promised  advantage  to  themselves,  drawn 
by  the  demand  of  those  who  desire  their  services. 
The  cost  of  It  is  easy  to  talk  lightly  of  more  or  less  arbitrary  exclu- 
exclusion  sion  rules>  Qf  illiteracy  tests,  and  so  forth,  until  one  real 
izes  the  sort  of  social  surgery  that  they  involve.  It  is 
not  possible  to  lower  the  portcullis  without  cutting  into 
living  flesh.  A  large  proportion  of  those  excluded  will 
necessarily  be  people  bound  by  the  tenderest  ties  to  those 
already  in  this  country.  The  individual  cases  as  they 
occur  make  this  only  too  real  to  the  spectator  in  an 
immigration  inquiry  court  room.  The  most  reasonable 
rules  of  exclusion  work  personal  havoc.  I  have  seen  a 
mother  fainting  before  the  judges  who  excluded  (as 
they  were  bound  by  law  to  do)  her  little  feeble-minded 
boy.  The  father  and  elder  children  were  irrevocably 
planted  in  America.  A  return  to  pogrom-smitten 
Russia  with  one  child  out  of  her  brood  would  have  been 
bad  enough,  but  she  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  too  far 
advanced  in  pregnancy  to  be  able  to  make  the  journey. 
The  helpless,  weak-minded  child  had  to  return  without 
her,  to  heaven  knows  what  fate,  one  of  the  older  children 
being  sent  back  with  it.  Such  cases  are  inevitable  under 
any  hard  and  fast  rule,  and  one  must  face  them  as  one 

*  Mr.  Joseph  Lee  contributed  an  interesting  discussion  of  this 
chapter  in  its  original  form  to  Charities  and  the  Commons,  XIX, 
pages  1453-5.  Jan.  25,  1908,  under  the  title,  "Assimilation  and 
Nationality." 


A  CHRISTMAS  MANGER   IN  A  CROATIAN  CHURCH  IN   PENNSYLVANIA 


A  CROATIAN  WEDDING  PARTY  IN  ALLEGHENY,  PENNSYLVANIA 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  407 

faces  the  cruel  by-results  of  any  well-meant  legislation; 
but  it  should  at  least  be  realized  that  every  exclusion 
provision  multiplies  such  cases.  There  is  no  point  at 
which  the  stream  of  immigration  can  be  severed  without 
the  most  tragic  results  to  individual  families.  Certain 
measures  can,  however,  be  urged  with  a  united  front 
by  persons  of  the  most  diverse  opinions.  Among  these 
measures  are,  first,  the  abolition  of  the  steerage  and 
the  requirement  of  the  equivalent  of  the  present  second- 
cabin  accommodations  for  all  passengers;  and  secondly, 
the  presence  of  a  United  States  official  and  above  all 
of  a  matron  on  every  vessel  bringing  any  considerable 
number  of  immigrants.  These  requirements,  in  making 
immigration  more  expensive,  would  restrict  it  in  a 
natural  way  and  without  increasing  the  number  of 
debarments  and  deportations. 

But  whatever  the  future  dimensions  of  the  stream  of  Fusion 
immigration,  it  has  already  irrevocably  planted  here  a 
great  collection  of  representatives  of  different  peoples. 
Obviously,  if  the  old  unity  is  to  be  maintained  or  regained 
it  must  be  in  one  of  two  ways.  Either  there  must  be 
actual  fusion  through  mingling  of  blood  in  intermarriage 
and  the  creation  of  one  new  common  stock,  with  the 
unity  that  this  implies,  or  short  of  this  it  must  be  a 
spiritual  fusion  alone — assimilation — the  growth  into 
similarity  in  speech,  ways  and  thoughts. 

As  to  the  question  of  racial  fusion,  we  are,  as  already 
said,  as  yet  hopelessly  ignorant.  The  biologists  are  not 
even  ready  to  go  beyond  the  very  vague  rule  that  too  wide 
differences  and  too  little  variety  are  both  probably  bad. 

As  regards  the  Slav  in  particular,  there  is  not  very  Slavic  amal- 
much  to  be  said  in  regard  to  racial  amalgamation.     It  gamatlon 
might  be  hoped  that  the   elaborate   census  tables,  ex 
cerpts  from  which  may  be  found  in  Appendix  XXV,  page 
475,    as  to  intermarriage  would  give  information,  but 
little  of  interest  can  be  derived  from  them,  and  one  is 
forced  back  upon  generalities  and  personal  impressions. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  there  is  no  physical  barrier 


408        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

to  intermarriage  between  Slavs  and  Americans,  nor  even 
so  much  physical  unlikeness  as  in  the  case  of  Italians  and 
Jews,  with  their  more  southern  characteristics.  A  Slav 
of  the  second  or  third  generation  in  America  would  be 
likely  to  look,  for  better  for  worse,  much  like  "anybody 
else."  I  should  judge  that  on  the  basis  of  bodily  appear 
ance  the  much  mixed  Slavic  peoples  were  at  least  as 
similar  to  the  much  mixed  American  stock  as,  say,  the 
French  or  the  Scandinavians. 

The  barrier  is  social  and  psychical,  not  physical. 
v  I  This  barrier  is  probably  overcome  most  easily  in  the 
{  highest  and  lowest  social  classes;  on  the  one  hand,  in  the 
circles  of  society  where  people  belong  to  a  more  or  less 
cosmopolitan  monde,  on  the  other,  at  the  bottom,  where 
attractions  of  sex  and  personal  convenience  are  not  com 
plicated  by  much  regard  for  estranging  abstract  ideas. 
The  social  Elsewhere  intermarriage  is  likely  to  be  deferred  till 
the  sense  of  national  difference  in  the  individual  case  has 
almost  reached  the  vanishing  point.  The  newcomer  is 
likely  to  overcome  his  stand-offishness  sooner  than  the 
old  resident.  Partly  on  this  account,  but  more  because 
of  the  scarcity  of  foreign  women,  cases  of  mixed  marriages 
in  which  the  man,  the  active  party  in  bringing  about  a 
marriage,  is  foreign  while  the  wife  is  native  born,  are, 
as  the  census  figures  indicate,  over  twice  as  many  as 
cases  of  a  foreign  wife  with  a  native  husband.  It  is  also 
interesting  to  notice  that  it  is  nearly  five  times  as  common 
for  a  foreigner  and  a  native  to  marry,  as  for  foreigners 
from  two  different  countries  to  intermarry.  Native,  how 
ever,  may  mean  of  the  same  nationality  as  the  other 
partner,  only  of  the  first  generation  in  America.* 

*  The  figures  that  we  have  to  go  by  are  those  of  the  last  census 
in  regard  to  the  parentage  of  white  persons  born  in  this  country, 
and  their  meaning  is  subject  to  many  qualifications.  It  must  not 
be  forgotten,  for  instance,  that  what  appear  to  be  mixed  foreign 
marriages  may  involve  no  more  mingling  than  a  marriage  be 
tween  Russian  and  Polish  Jews,  or  Austrian  and  Bavarian  Ger 
mans.  On  the  other  hand,  the  9,000,000  persons  born  of  un 
mixed  foreign  marriages  doubtless  represent  largely  marriages 
contracted  before  coming  to  America.  See  Appendix  XXV. 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  409 

I  am  led  to  believe  that  native  does  mean  this  in 
many  cases  of  intermarriage  between  the  native  and  the 
foreign  born  by  seeing  how  persistent  and  powerful 
the  sense  of  difference  remains,  even  after  all  contrasts 
in  speech  and  way  of  life  have  passed  away.  For 
example,  I  recall  how  a  Bohemian-American  acquaint 
ance,  an  enthusiastic  lover  of  his  own  people,  told  me  with 
not  unnatural  indignation  of  the  offensive  attitude  of  the 
family  of  an  American  girl  who  was  marrying  a  young 
Bohemian  lawyer,  her  superior  in  means,  social  standing 
and  cultivation. 

This  deep-seated  antipathy  or  contempt  for  the  un 


like — less  than  kin  being  regarded  as  naturally  "  less  than 
kind" — is  especially  to  be  regretted  in  a  country  like 
ours.  The  incoming  groups  bring  it  with  them,  and  they 
find  it  here — and  not  only  among  the  ignorant.  The 
story  comes  to  me  of  the  wife  of  a  Harvard  professor  who 
was  relating  what  a  pleasant  call  she  had  had  from  a 
visiting  professor  from  Paris.  "He  was  very  agreeable, 
but  then,  after  all,  he  was  only  a  Frenchy,"  she  concluded. 

Especially  is  there  always  a  tendency  to  undervalue' 
any  nationality  which  ,is  known  in  real  life  only  by 
representatives  of  its  lower  social  strata.  A  rather 
imposing  New  York  lady  whom  I  met  returning  from 
Europe  told  me  that  she  had  been  much  surprised  to  find 
Italy  such  a  civilized  country.  I  must  have  shown  my 
wonder,  for  she  excused  herself  by  saying  that  of  course 
she  knew  better,  but  she  always  thought  of  it  as  a  country 
of  fruit  peddlers  and  dirty,  ignorant  laborers.  To  many 
a  New  England  child  the  appreciation  of  the  fact  that 
there  are  Irish  people  of  social  prestige  comes  rather  late 
and  with  some  sense  of  surprise.  So  the  Germans,  the 
Greeks,  the  Jews,  the  Swedes,  the  Chinese,  suffer  in  the 
estimation  of  the  half-educated  and  snobbish  wherever 
they  are  represented  by  the  poor  immigrant  class. 

It  is  a  shock  when  we  meet,  not  with  humiliated 
acquiescence  in  our  supercilious  judgments,  but  with  a 
corresponding  contempt  for  ourselves;  when  we  learn, 


Race:  preju- 


410        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

for  instance,  that  we  are  physically  unpleasant  to  the 
Japanese  owing  to  a  personal  odor  which  they  associate 
with  our  meat  eating.  It  is  indeed  hard  for  the  idea  that 
others  do  not  admire  us  to  penetrate  our  American  minds, 
but  when  it  does  enter  it  lets  in  light. 

Segrega-  The  reciprocal  feeling  of  repulsion  shows  itself  espe 

cially  in  the  tendency  of  different  nationalities  to  draw 
I  apart.  The  phenomenon  is  familiar  enough  in  the 
tenement  districts,  but  the  same  thing  occurs,  for 
\  instance,  in  a  Texas  country  town  where  I  found  that  the 
Germans  and  Bohemians,  who  were  the  main  inhabitants, 
seemed  to  mix  as  little  as  oil  and  water.  Each  of  these 
two  nationalities  had  its  own  separate  public  school;  in 
the  one,  named  Germania,  both  English  and  German  were 
taught;  in  the  Bohemian  school  English  only,  Bohemian 
not  being  permitted  by  the  authorities  (county  or  state, 
I  do  not  know  which).  The  Americans  who  used  to  live 
in  the  place  had,  most  of  them,  moved  away.  There 
seemed  to  be  no  friction,  only  a  desire  not  to  mingle. 
One  constantly  runs  across  this  fact,  that  the  old  settlers 
tend  to  withdraw  as  soon  as  they  begin  to  be  irked  by 

I  a  foreign  atmosphere. 
Fusion,  then,  we  can  expect  only  as  we  outgrow  these 
antipathies  and  invidious  comparisons.  Aside  from 
these  there  is  nothing  to  keep  white  peoples  apart,  and 
it  is  hard  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  after  a  lapse  of 
time  which  no  one  can  forecast,  a  fused  and  welded 
people  will  be  the  outcome,  and  that  we  are  beholding 
the  gradual  creation  of  a  new  race  of  mankind. 

To  turn  to  the  previous  question,  assimilation  as  dis 
tinct  from  fusion,  it  is  clear  that  the  difficulty  often  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  process  is  regarded  as  a  one-sided  one, 
as  mere  absorption  or,  indeed,  as  a  form  of  conquest  and 
extirpation.  "We  two  shall  be  one  and  I  will  be  the 
one."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  men  grow  alike  in  intercourse 
as  inevitably  as  two  communicating  bodies  of  water 
reach  the  same  level.  But  the  level  reached  is  a  new  one, 
not  that  of  either  before  the  interchange  began. 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  4!  I 

Men  mentally  copy  one  another,  and  Tarde  has  made  The  laws  of 
the  laws  of  imitation  the  subject  of  brilliant  sociological  imitation 
generalizations.*  He  shows  how  the  choice  between  the 
ctistoms  in  which  men  differ  is  sometimes  selective — a 
conscious  or  unconscious  acceptance  of  the  better  adapted 
of  the  different  copies.  More  often,  perhaps,  the  choice 
is  determined,  not  by  intrinsic  superiority,  but  by  some 
general  rule  of  preference.  In  a  state  of  society  where 
custom  reigns,  the  preference  is  for  the  old  and  estab 
lished,  as  such;  where  fashion  and  progress  are  the  ruling 
ideas,  what  is  novel  is  preferred  for  that  reason.  Again, 
that  which  has  prestige  of  any  sort  is  regularly  preferred ; 
the  rural  mode  copies  the  urban ;  the  boy,  the  man ;  the 
socially  inferior,  the  socially  superior;  backward  nations, 
the  leading  nation  of  the  day ;  the  minority,  the  majority, 
and  so  on. 

In  America   each  immigrant  group   exerts  a  certain   American 
influence  on  the  community  into  which  it  comes,  and 
some  newly  imported  customs  take  root,  either  because  ant 
they  are  attractive  or  useful  in  themselves,  or  because  the 
newcomers  are  so  represented  as  to  have  local  prestige; 
but  the  laws  of  imitation  work  out  on  the  whole  to  effect 
a  much  greater  change  in  the  immigrants  than  in  the 
old  settled  American  community. 

In  the  first  place,  the  convenience  of  unity  makes  for 
Americanization.     The  different  immigrant  groups  neu-     | 
tralize  one  another's  influence.     In  the  steerage  of  an     j 
eastward  bound  liner  one   finds  perhaps   Roumanians,      | 
Croatians,   Jews,    Germans,    Italians,   using   English   as 
their  lingua  franca, — men,  some  of  them  from  the  same 
village  at  home,  yet  unable  to  speak  with  one  another 
until  now.     It  is  E  pluribus  unum  in  a  new  sense. 

Again,  in  America  the  way  to  success  on  a  large  scale, 
(whether  political  or  financial  or  social  or  literary  success), 
the  only  way  to  a  national  influence  or  position,  is 
the  way  out  of  the  Ghetto,  Little  Italy  or  "Bohemian 

*  Cf.  his  "  Laws  of  Imitation,"  translated  from  the  French  by 
Mrs.  Parsons.  Holt,  1903. 


412        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Altering 

family 

names 


Town."     Thus   American    ways   have   practical    value, 
whether  good  or  bad  in  themselves. 

Further,  the  prestige  of  numbers  is  on  the  side  of  the 
American  example,  and  the  more  so  the  more  scattered 
the  newcomers  are.  In  a  close  colony  the  influence  is 
the  other  way  for  those  inside,  yet  even  so,  the  attraction 
of  the  American  mass  makes  itself  felt.  As  in  a  teacup 
one  sees  the  little  bubbles  drawn  to  the  larger  ones  and 
merging  instantly  when  once  in  contact,  so  the  larger 
life  tends  to  absorb  the  smaller  group.  Indeed,  the 
prestige  of  America,  and  the  almost  hypnotic  influence 
of  this  prestige  on  the  poorer  class  of  immigrants,  is 
often  both  pathetic  and  absurd.  They  cannot  throw 
away  fast  enough  good  things  and  ways  that  they  have 
brought  with  them,  to  replace  them  by  sometimes 
inferior  American  substitutes. 

Especially  deplorable  is  the  way  in  which  men  alter  or 
discard  their  family  names.  The  mine  boss  or  petty  offi 
cial  hastens  or  inaugurates  the  process  by  refusing  to 
be  bothered  with  what  he  calls  "  outlandish  "  names  which 
he  cannot  spell.  One  Lithuanian  family  explain  care 
fully  their  real  name  and  add,  "  We  are  called  Bruno  just 
because  father  was  put  down  in  the  boss's  book  under 
the  name  of  an  Italian  who  had  gone  away."  In  the 
Pennsylvania  mining  towns  one  finds  Slavs  who  call 
themselves  by  such  names  as  John  Smith  or  Tim  O'Sul- 
livan  or  Pat  Murphy,  in  the  effort  to  make  Americans 
of  themselves.  It  is  a  great  pity.  The  descendants  of 
these  men  have  a  right  to  their  paternity,  and  to  the 
clue  to  family  history  given  by  a  family  name. 

Thus  under  the  joint  influence  of  convenience,  ambi 
tion  and  the  natural  human  desire  to  be  like  other  people, 
and  especially  to  be  like  those  who  occupy  the  high  seats 
in  the  synagogue,  the  unifying  change  goes  on.  The 
early  Polish  immigrants,  patriots  and  men  of  education , 
melted  into  the  common  life  so  completely  that  later 
comers  could  find  no  point  of  attachment  with  them. 
The  recent  Slavic  immigrants,  Poles  and  others,  have 


POLISH  CITIZENS  OF  MASSACHUSETTS 

1  and  3.  Church  goers  in  Northampton,  drawn   from  Polish    settlements    in    Hadley  and   else 
where.      2.    In  Old  Hadley.      4.   A  Polish  home  in  Sunderland 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  413 

come  in  much  larger  numbers;  they  have  formed  con 
siderable  colonies,  and  their  hearts  are  set,  with  a  strength 
of  desire  which  we  can  hardly  conceive,  on  having 
their  children  speak  their  own  language  as  their  proper 
tongue.  The  consequence  is  some  degree  of  success  in 
this  aim,  but  it  means,  I  am  convinced,  only  a  retardation 
of  the  process. 

In  Cleveland  a  Bohemian- American  teacher  who  took  The  unas- 
the  school  census  found  one  or  two  young  people  in  their  similated 
early  "  teens,"  born  in  this  country,  yet  unable  to  under 
stand  English.  This  was  considered,  however,  very  un 
usual.  I  was  told  of  a  Hungarian  who  went  to  live  in 
Prague,  but  there  in  the  capital  of  Bohemia  he  never 
learned  the  language,  as  he  found  he  could  get  on  with 
German  which  he  knew.  Later  he  moved  to  Chicago 
and  lived  in  the  Bohemian  quarter,  where  he  found  it 
indispensable  to  learn  Bohemian,  and  did  so,  with  toil 
and  pains.  I  have  heard  of  graduates  of  Polish  schools 
in  Chicago  and  Baltimore  who  do  not  understand  Eng 
lish.  I  have  been  in  a  Polish  "sisters'"  school  where 
the  children  were  singing  Polish  songs. 

' '  We  are  little  exiles ; 
Far  from  our  dear  home 
We  weep  night  and  day," 

or  something  like  that,  the  little  round-cheeked  boys 
just  in  from  play  on  a  Chicago  sidewalk  were  chanting. 

A  thousand  more  items  to  show  the  separateness  of  The    second 

the  foreign  life  in  our  midst  might  be  piled  together,  and  £eneration 

American 
in  the  end  they  would  all  be  as  nothing  against  the 

irresistible  influence  through  which  it  comes  about 
that  the  immigrants  find  themselves  the  parents  of 
American  children.  They  are  surprised,  they  are  proud, 
they  are  scandalized,  they  are  stricken  to  the  heart  with 
regret, — whatever  their  emotions  they  are  powerless. 
The  change  occurs  in  different  ways  among  the  educated 
and  the  uneducated,  but  it  occurs  in  either  case. 

The  prestige  of  America  and  the  hatred  of  children  for 


414       SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

being  different  from  their  playmates  is  something  the 
\ '  parents  cannot  stand  against.  The  result  is  often 
grotesque.  A  graduate  at  one  of  our  women's  colleges, 
the  daughter  of  cultivated  Germans,  told  a  friend:  "My 
father  made  me  learn  German  and  always  was  wanting 
me  to  read  it.  I  hated  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it. 
It  seemed  to  me  something  inferior.  People  in  the  West 
call  a  thing  '  Dutch '  as  a  term  of  scorn.  It  was  not  till  I 
was  in  college  that  I  realized  what  German  literature 
and  philosophy  have  meant  in  the  world,  and  that  to  be 
a  German  is  not  a  thing  to  be  ashamed  of."  Less 
educated  parents,  or  those  using  a  language  less  impor 
tant  than  German,  have  a  still  more  difficult  task  to 
hold  the  next  generation.  "I  ain't  no  Hun,  I'm  an 
American,"  expresses  their  reaction  on  the  situation. 

In  a  Nebraska  county  town,  in  a  district  largely 
settled  by  Bohemians,  one  father  of  a  family  told  me  his 
experience.  The  older  children,  he  said,  spoke  Bohemian 
excellently,  they  used  to  take  part  in  private  theatricals 
in  the  Bohemian  opera  house  in  the  town  and  did  well; 
but  the  younger  children  he  simply  could  not  induce 
to  take  to  it.  They  knew  so  little  that  if  he  sent  them 
with  a  message  in  Bohemian  they  were  likely  to  make 
mistakes. 

This,  I  think,  is  typical.  In  remote  country  settle 
ments,  or  in  city  colonies  of  a  marked  national  character, 
there  are  plenty  of  exceptions,  but  I  am  confident  that 
the  rule  is  as  stated  by  the  Nebraska  Bohemian.  I  have 
found  instances  of  individual  Americans  learning  Polish, 
Bohemian  or  other  languages  as  a  matter  of  convenience, 
business  or  pleasure,  or  as  children  among  playmates, 
but  I  have  never  heard  of  a  community  where  the  process 
worked  in  general  away  from  English,  not  toward  it. 
Should  they  With  the  acquisition  of  English  the  children  are  apt 
learn  Eng-  ^Q  jose  ^heir  parents'  language.  Against  this  the  parents 
strive.  It  is  very  common,  for  instance,  for  the  parents 
to  endeavor  to  have  the  children  speak  only  the  old 
language  until  they  go  to  school,  knowing  that  this  is 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  415 

their  one  opportunity  to  acquire  it,  and  foreseeing  that 
after  the  children  have  entered  school,  they  will  speak 
English  not  only  outside  of  the  home  but  within  it, 
too,  so  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  keep  English  from 
becoming  also  the  family  language.  Henceforth  the 
parents  must  talk  with  their  own  children  in  a  foreign 
medium  in  which  they  are  consciously  at  a  disadvantage. 
Is  it  strange  if  the  parents  desire  to  avoid  these  diffi 
culties? 

What  should  be  the  American's  attitude  toward  this 
question?  I  personally  have  no  doubt  that  the  right 
thing  to  do  is  to  wish  the  parents  Godspeed  in  their 
endeavor  to  have  their  children  learn  their  language. 
One  of  the  great  evils  among  the  children  of  foreigners,  as 
every  one  who  knows  them  realizes,  is  the  disastrous  gulf 
between  the  older  and  the  younger  generation.  Disci 
pline,  in  this  new  freedom  which  both  parents  and  chil 
dren  misunderstand,  is  almost  impossible;  besides  which, 
the  children,  who  have  to  act  as  interpreters  for  their 
parents  and  do  business  for  them,  are  thrown  into  a 
position  of  unnatural  importance,  and  feel  only  contempt 
for  old-world  ways,  a  feeling  enhanced  by  the  too  common 
American  attitude.  One  hears  stories  of  Italian  children 
refusing  to  reply  to  their  mother  if  spoken  to  in  Italian.* 

In  addition  to  these  considerations,  and  to  the  suffi 
ciently  obvious  fact  that  to  possess  two  languages  in 
stead  of  one  is  in  itself  an  intellectual  advantage,  it  is 
to  be  remembered  that  the  leaders  and  teachers  of  the 
newcomers  must  be  men  who  can  speak  both  languages, 
and  that  it  would  be  a  national  misfortune  if  these  were 
solely  men  of  foreign  birth,  including  none  of  the  second, 
or  later,  generations  in  this  country.  A  final  and  less 
important  consideration  is  that  to  know  any  immigrant 
language  is  money  in  a  man's  pocket. 

An  unfortunate   element   of   difficulty  is  a   common 

*  Cf.  the  wise  and  brief  article  on  "The  Struggle  in  the  Family 
Life,"  by  Miss  McDowell  of  the  University  of  Chicago  Settle 
ment.  Charities,  XIII,  pages  196—7  (Dec.  3,  1904). 


416        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

American  jealousy  of  any  speech  but  English.  I  was 
amused  at  the  tact  with  which  this  feeling  was  disarmed 
when  some  Bohemians  once  wanted  to  get  permission  to 
use  a  public  schoolroom  out  of  hours  for  a  Bohemian 
class.  "  If  there  should  ever  be  a  war,"  their  spokesman 
said,  "our  boys  would  be  among  the  first  to  volunteer. 
The  Bohemian  lad  at  the  front  would  have  to  write  in 
English  to  his  mother,  and  though  she  could  not  read 
his  letter  she  could  readily  find  some  one  to  translate  it 
to  her.  But  the  Bohemian  letters  which  he  received 
from  her,  and  which,  amid  the  demoralizing  life  of  the 
camp  have  such  precious  possibilities  of  influence,  would 
be  entirely  useless,  for  he  would  not  be  able  to  read  a  word 
of  them."  The  use  of  the  schoolroom  was  granted. 
Parochial  We  cannot  be  surprised,  however  much  we  may  regret 

it,  that  the  duty  of  maintaining  separate  schools  is  urged 
on  their  people  by  clerical  and  other  leaders,  on  both 
patriotic  and  religious  grounds.  Among  the  Slavs  the 
Poles  have  done  the  most  in  this  field.  Both  good  priests 
who  fear  change  on  account  of  its  threat  to  all  that  they 
hold  most  sacred,  and  greedy  priests  who  desire  to  keep 
their  hold  for  lower  reasons,  naturally  strain  every 
nerve  to  encourage  parochial  schools.  Father  Kruszka 
estimates  that  at  the  beginning  of  1901  there  were  in  the 
United  States  about  70,000  pupils  in  Polish  Catholic 
schools  alone.  These  schools  undertake  to  train  the 
children  in  religion  and  in  the  Polish  language  and  Polish 
history,  as  well  as  in  the  regular  public  school  branches. 
English  is  taught  as  a  subject  throughout  the  classes,  and 
generally  some  of  the  other  subjects  are  taught  in  Eng 
lish,  as,  for  instance,  geography,  United  States  history, 
and  bookkeeping  and  algebra  for  those  who  get  so  far. 
It  is  claimed  by  those  interested,  that  children  leaving 
these  schools  for  the  public  schools  enter  classes  above 
or  on  a  level  with  those  they  have  left.*  I  have  seen 

*  There  are,  however,  on  the  other  hand  critics  of  the  paro 
chial  schools,  not  only  among  Americans,  but  among  Poles.  In 
Appendix  XXVI,  page  477,  will  be  found  a  clipping  on  the  sub 
ject  from  a  Polish  paper  in  Milwaukee. 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  417 

parochial  schools  that  were  subject  to  criticism  from  the 
point  of  view  of  modern  arrangements  for  the  health  and 
comfort  of  the  pupils,  and  which  were  primitive  in 
various  ways  (the  same  might  be  said,  alas,  of  some 
public  schools),  but  one  must  admire  the  devotion  of 
these  often  very  ignorant  and  poor  people,  who  out  of 
their  slender  means  build  and  support  all  theseAschools, 
when  free  schools  are  already  provided  out  of  the  taxes. 

Outside  of  the  Roman  Catholic  groups — for  instance 
among  the  Greek  Catholic  Ruthenians  and  the  free- 
thinking  Bohemians — it  is  very  usual  to  find  part-time 
supplementary  schools  for  religious  or  patriotic  instruc 
tion,  or  both.  This  would  seem  highly  desirable  on  one 
condition — that  the  strain  on  the  children  is  not  too 
great.  Sunday  schools  and  any  reasonable  amount  of 
vacation  schooling  seem  quite  safe,  but  it  is  easy  to 
imagine  that  such  extra  work  is  not  always  relished  by 
the  children,  and  this  is  one  more  element  of  friction 
which  makes  it  difficult  to  modify  or  delay  the  Ameri 
canizing  process. 

While  it  can  be  only  an  advantage  to  children  to  learn  The   claim 
their  parents'  language,  there  can  be  no  question  that  °^  English 
they  should  in  any  case  learn  English,  and  learn  it  well. 
A  child  has  a  right  to  be  furnished  with  this  key  to  success 
on  precisely  the  same  grounds  that  he  has  a  right  to  be 
given  a  knowledge  of  those  indispensable  arts,  reading 
and  writing.     And  in  some  cases  the  state,  as  guardian 
of  the  rights  of  children,  may  have  to  require  this,  just 
as  it  has  to  require  universal  primary  education. 

Beyond  fulfilling  this  duty  to  the  children  growing  up 
in  our  midst,  there  should  be  no  compulsion  in  this  whole 
matter,  no  suspicion  of  coercion  or  interference,  but  a 
confident  faith  in  freedom,  a  candid  recognition  of  the 
right  of  all  to  be  as  different  as  they  please,  with  no 
reserves  and  no  jealousies.  Public  libraries  should 
follow  the  good  example  of  Passaic  and  other  places, 
and  provide  books  in  the  languages  in  which  they  will 
be  read.  The  complaints  of  Poles  in  a  certain  district 
27 


418       SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

that  they  lose  their  mail  because  postal  employes  can 
speak  only  English,  should  be  met  with  a  businesslike 
and  cheerful  response  to  their  wants. 

Apart  from  the  prime  reason  that  this  is  the  just  and 
friendly  course,  any  other  breeds  ill  will  and  discord  out 
of  all  proportion  to  the  points  at  issue.  We  are  dealing 
often  with  men  sore  and  irritable  from  European  ex 
periences.  A  panicky  desire  to  denationalize  our  immi 
grants  would  result  in  unspeakable  disaster,  and  would 
have  no  shadow  of  excuse.  The  process  of  change  goes 
on  too  fast  and  too  superficially  as  it  is;  it  needs  not 
forcing,  but  rather  guidance  toward  what  is  best  in 
America. 

Bad  Language  is  not  the  only,  not  even  the  main  channel 

example  Qf  influence  The  example  of  personal  conduct  is  even 
more  effective.  Biologists  show  us  by  what  natural  laws 
animals  take  the  color  of  their  environment ;  for  different 
reasons,  but  as  surely,  people  do  the  same.  Unfor 
tunately,  from  the  nature  of  the  case  the  immigrant 
generally  begins  at  the  bottom.  His  helplessness  makes 
him  sought  for  as  prey  by  sharpers  and  grafters;  it  is 
all  that  the  immigration  officials  can  do  to  keep  them  off 
as  he  lands.  As  soon  as  he  leaves  the  paternal  care  of 
Ellis  Island  they  attack  in  force.  Boarding-house 
runners,  shady  employment  agents,  sellers  of  shoddy 
wares,  extortionate  hack  drivers  and  expressmen  beset 
his  way.  One  hears  all  sorts  of  stories  of  abuses  from 
both  Americans  and  Slavs — of  bosses  who  take  bribes 
to  give  employment  or  to  assign  good  chambers  in  the 
mine,  of  ill  usage  at  the  hands  of  those  who  should 
be  officers  of  justice,  of  arrests  for  the  sake  of  fees,*  of 

*  For  an  illustrative  anecdote  see  page  367.  Some  account 
of  abuses  from  which  immigrants  have  suffered  in  judicial  pro 
ceedings,  at  the  hands  of  "shyster"  lawyers,  interpreters  and 
others  will  be  found  in  the  Report  of  the  Commission  on  Immi 
gration  of  the  State  of  New  York,  1909,  especially  pages  54-61. 
See  also  Blaxter,  H.  V.:  "The  Aldermen  and  Their  Courts." 
Charities  and  the  Commons,  XXI,  pages  851-858  (Feb.  6,  1909), 
and  Kogukol:  "The  Slav's  a  Man  for  A'  That,"  ibid.,  pages 
589-598. 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  419 

unjust  fines,  of  excessive  costs  paid  rather  than  incur  a 
greater  expense.  The  litigiousness  of  the  Slavs  is 
exploited  by  "shyster"  lawyers  till  the  immigrants 
learn  wisdom  by  experience. 

The  suffering  and  loss  are  less  serious — bad  as  they 
are — than  the  evil  lesson.  In  school  the  boy  who  has 
been  cruelly  hazed  is  apt  to  be  cruel  to  the  next  crop  of 
victims,  and  in  the  same  way  fraud  and  harshness  tend 
to  reproduce  themselves  in  the  larger  world. 

But  it  is  not  only  direct  ill-treatment  that  is  a  peril ; 
the  economic  pressure  and  low  standards  of  our  lowest 
industrial  strata  are  in  themselves  disastrous. 

"My  people  do  not  live  in  America,  they  live  underneath 
America.  America  goes  on  over  their  heads.  America 
does  not  begin  till  a  man  is  a  workingman,  till  he  is 
earning  two  dollars  a  day.  A  laborer  cannot  afford  to 
be  an  American." 

These  words,  which  were  said  to  me  by  one  of  the  wisest 
Slav  leaders  that  I  have  ever  met,  have  rung  in  my  mind 
during  all  the  five  years  since  he  spoke  them.*  Be 
ginning  at  the  bottom,  "living  not  in  America  but  under 
neath  America,"  means  living  among  the  worst  surround 
ings  that  the  country  has  to  show,  worse,  often,  than  the 
public  would  tolerate,  except  that  "only  foreigners" 
are  affected.  Yet  to  foreigners  they  are  doubly  injurious 
because,  coming  as  they  often  do,  with  low  home  stand 
ards  but  susceptible,  eager,  and  apt  to  take  what  they 
find  as  the  American  idea  of  what  ought  to  be,  they  are 
likely  to  accept  and  adopt  as  "all  right"  whatever  they 
tumble  into.- 

I  have  been  in  places  in  Pennsylvania  where  all  one 
can  say  is  that  civilization  had  broken  down.f  Being 

*  Father  Paul  Tymkevich,  a  Ruthenian  Greek-Catholic  priest 
of  Yonkers.  Had  he  been  spared,  he  could  have  helped  his 
countrymen  and  us.  See  "A  Shepherd  of  Immigrants,"  for 
some  account  of  his  work.  Charities,  XIII,  pages  193-4  (Dec., 
1909). 

t  Some  of  these  conditions  have  since  been  studied  and  made 
public  in  the  Pittsburgh  Survey.  The  worst  conditions  seemed 
to  be  in  Allegheny  and  in  outside  boroughs. 


420       SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


The  intoxi 
cation     of 
making 
money 


in  a  city,  people  could  not  help  themselves  individually, 
as  they  might  have  done  in  the  country,  and  the  family 
with  the  most  decent  ideas  was  dragged  down  by  the 
general  degradation  of  the  environment.  From  the 
dance  hall  at  one  end  of  the  street,  to  the  white  door-bells, 
all  up  and  down  its  length,  which  openly  denoted  kitchen 
bar-rooms,  everything  smelled  of  lawlessness.  The  water 
was  known  to  be  infected  with  typhoid,  and  had  to  be 
boiled  to  be  safe — a  considerable  expense  and  trouble, 
and  an  excellent  reason  for  drinking  other  things.  In 
the  spring  the  refuse  of  the  winter  stood  in  heaps  before 
the  doors.  The  deep  clay  mud  made  some  streets  abso 
lutely  impracticable  in  wet  weather.  The  neighbors 
mended  them  by  pouring  on  ashes  and  miscellaneous 
dumpage.  Assaults,  in  some  cases  ending  in  death, 
took  place  night  after  night,  and  although  the  identity 
of  the  offender  was  supposed  to  be  known,  or  rather 
because  of  that  fact,  no  one  dared  move  in  the  matter. 
The  mayor  stood  for  "running  the  town  wide  open," 
and  was  said  to  have  investments  not  only  in  saloons 
but  in  immoral  resorts. 

This  is  a  composite  picture.  I  saw  or  heard  of  each 
thing  on  the  spot,  but  not  all  were  in  the  same  place. 
Now  consider  that  it  is  into  surroundings  like  these  that 
we  put  our  new  employes ;  that  this  is  the  example  that 
we  set  before  our  new  fellow  citizens.  Under  such 
circumstances  the  Americanization  over  which  we  are 
so  complacent  is  by  no  means  all  gain.  The  change  is 
often,  also,  a  change  for  the  worse  among  those  who  do 
not  have  to  begin  at  the  bottom. 

The  intoxication  of  the  change  from  homes  where  there 
is  no  money  to  be  made  and  no  chance  for  any  sort  of 
advancement,  to  the  boundless  financial  opportunities 
(or  what  appear  such)  of  America,  often  results  in  a  moral 
degeneration.  Too  often  the  educated  immigrant  has 
been  imbued  by  what  he  has  read  before  coming  here 
with  the  idea  that  America  is  "the  land  of  the  almighty 
dollar,"  and  arrives  neither  expecting  nor  desiring  any- 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  421 

thing  else  of  the  country  than  the  opportunity  to  get  as 
rich  as  possible.  It  is  a  tragi-comedy  to  see  at  once  the 
native  American  upbraiding  the  newcomer  with  having 
come  here  solely  to  make  money  (while  he  himself,  very 
likely,  is  living  in  a  town  which  he  has  chosen  purely  for 
the  same  reason,  and  which  he  makes  no  effort  to 
serve),  and  the  newcomer,  making  no  move  to  get  into 
touch  with  American  strivings  towards  ideals,  proclaim 
ing  to  every  one  that  America  is  a  country  where  no 
one  cares  for  anything  but  material  success. 

Is  it  strange  that  a  Croatian  physician  wrote  to   me  Two  views 
from  Pittsburgh  as  follows? 

"The  great  question  appears  to  be  how  soon  immi 
grants  can  be  assimilated,  to  what  degree,  and  if  they 
are  going  to  be  good  citizens.  It  has  been  found  that 
everybody  who  gets  Americanized  becomes  a  good  citi 
zen,  i.  e.,  a  shrewd  business  man  who  knows  his  value  at 
the  polls,  who  knows  how  to  outwit  the  intricacies  of 
the  law,  and  how  to  be  ashamed  of  his  origin,  his  name 
and  his  religion.  ...  So  far,  good  citizenship  is 
associated  with  the  ideal  of  a  policeman,  alderman, 
political  boss,  financier,  and  so  forth,  all  of  whom  we  can 
reach  and  see  as  good  American  citizens  with  rather 
dubious  moral  qualities,  while  educated  and  fine  feeling 
people  are  out  of  reach;  the  immigrant  knows  nothing 
of  their  existence.  There  is  no  need  to  fear  that,  so 
long  as  the  flesh  pots  are  full  in  America,  assimilation  and 
the  making  of  'good  citizens'  will  meet  any  obstacle; 
individuals,  families,  nations  will  readily  submit  to  every 
thing  American  if  it  only  means  their  material  advantage, 
while  they  don't  expect  in  this  country  any  moral  profit, 
as  there  is  none  to  get — for  them.  I  think  that  it  would 
be  a  good  thing  if  some  one  would  show  to  the  Americans 
their  real  moral  standing  in  the  world.  Unquestionably, 
with  their  freedom  and  their  natural  resources  there 
should  be  much  more  feeling  for  righteousness,  for 
tolerance  and  for  art  in  this  country.  Had  the  Ameri 
cans  not  the  right  men  in  Washington,  they  would  de- 


422        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

velop  in  a  few  years  into  the  most  zealous  worshippers  of 
the  Golden  Calf  and  of  nothing  else.  All  this  is,  of  course, 
merely  my  opinion,  but  it  is  based  upon  actual  observa 
tion  of  the  people  during  seven  years.  I  believe  in 
American,  that  is  in  human,  ideas,  and  will  hope  that 
the  minority  will  be  able  to  win  over  the  majority  and 
make  the  people  what  they  ought  to  be:  first  of  all, 
honest." 

This  letter  is  the  more  impressive  because  the  writer 
is  in  the  habit  of  pointing  out  to  his  countrymen  at  home 
the  advantages  which  emigration,  which  is  very  unpopu 
lar  in  Croatia,  may  bring  to  the  country,  and  what 
America  has  to  teach.  Like  Professor  Muensterberg, 
he  is  heroic  enough  to  tell  unpalatable  truths  to  both 
sides.  May  they  be  like  Mrs.  Browning's  anti-slavery 
message — "very  salt  and  bitter  and  good." 

After  these  disillusioned  words  from  one  Slav  who  has 
known  America  in  person,  it  is  with  a  sense  almost  of 
heartbreak  that  one  reads  the  Ode  to  Columbia  which 
the  Slovak  poet  Hurban  Vajansky  wrote  in  prison  in 
Segedin.*  He  begins  by  describing  the  situation  in 
Hungary  of  those  struggling  to  preserve  their  nation 
ality: 

The  old  men  die  beholding  only  ruin, 

Their  eyes  behold  no  hope,  no  truth  in  life, 

The  young  men  fall  away,  at  once  or  slowly, 

Even  the  strong  give  up  the  ceaseless  strife; 

Only  a  handful  still  keep  up  the  fight, 

Only  a  few  lights  burn  amid  the  night. 

Suddenly  rises  proudly  from  the  ocean 

A  giant  woman  with  majestic  face; 
Shining  the  drapery  of  her  snowy  garments, 

Her  eyes  like  flames  upon  the  altar  place; 
Her  god-like  breast  like  marble  fair  to  see. 
"You  poor  forsaken  children,  come  to  me." 

*  For  his  personal  history,  political  position  and  literary 
standing,  see  Capek's  "The  Slovaks  of  Hungary"  and  Seton- 
Watson's  "Racial  Problems  in  Austria-Hungary." 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  423 

"O  come;    I  know  you  bring  but  humble  packets 
That  from  your  fatherland  no  gems  you  bring, 

That  murderous  wrath  has  chased  you  from  your  dwellings, 
From  the  ancestral  soil  to  which  you  cling; 

No  gifts  I  offer,  but  this  one  reward — 

Time  for  free  work,  for  human  rights  regard." 

And  they,  disgraced  here  in  their  native  country, 

Lift  up  proud  heads  since  o'er  the  seas  they  came, 

And  there  he  speaks  aloud  who  here  was  silent, 
And  glories  there  in  what  he  here  thought  shame. 

Columbia  to  him  self-knowledge  gives, 

Surprised  he  finds  that  only  now  he  lives. 

Hail  to  our  brothers  whom  their  stepdame  cruel 
Drove  from  their  simple  huts,  their  native  sod. 

Columbia,  thou  hast  smitten  off  their  fetters, 
Lifting  them  up  to  manhood,  heaven  and  God. 

O  land  of  Christopher,  may  Christ  repay 

What  for  my  brothers  poor  thou  dost  today. 

O  sons  of  mine,  O  sisters,  O  my  people, 
I  from  my  distant  prison  speak  to  you. 

0  holy,  holy  heights  of  Tatra's  mountains, 

Our  fathers'   fields,  naught  is  on  earth  like  you. 
This  sinful,  wretched  world  does  not  command 
Aught  lovelier,  brothers,  than  the  Slovak  land. 

So  in  the  rigid  torment  of  my  prison, 

Weeping,.!  call  to  you  my  countrymen. 
Oh,  be  you  faithful  to  our  speech,  our  music, 

And  if  it  may  be,  come,  come  home  again. 
If  not,  yet  still  in  heart  with  us  remain. 

1  cease,  the  jailer  shakes  the  clanking  chain.* 

Another  view  of  what  America  is  to  the  Slav  is  that 
of  Father  Tymkevich,  whom  I  have  already  quoted. 

*  A  version  of  the  whole  poem,  by  Miss  Alice  Stone  Blackwell, 
appeared  in  the  Springfield  Republican,  Jan.  14,  1908;  from  this 
I  have  borrowed  freely,  while  not  adopting  it  as  it  stands,  as  I 
wished  to  preserve  the  metre  of  the  original.  Both  versions  are 
based  on  an  English  prose  translation  kindly  made  for  me  by 
Miss  Ethel  J.  Cablk  of  New  York. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  with  this  the  Ruthenian  ode  to 
Canada,  quoted  in  part  in  Appendix  XI,  pages  449-450. 


424        SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Economically  he  thought  they  gain  by  coming  here, 
"physically  and  morally,  no.  In  the  city  they  need 
more  morality."  Then  again,  with  deep  wisdom, 
"They  have  no  habits.  The  first  step  in  civilization  is  to 
acquire  habits,  and  where  can  they  acquire  them? 
On  the  streets?  In  the  saloon? 

"What  my  people  need  most  is  leaders, — leaders  to 
form  themselves  upon,  to  give  them  a  standard  of  am 
bition.  Other  people  have  leaders  of  their  own,  strong 
and  influential  men  among  the  immigrant  body,  and 
Americans  who  know  something  about  them  and  are 
ready  to  take  an  interest  in  them." 

And  again,  almost  like  a  cry,  the  phrase  I  have  pre 
viously  quoted,  "My  people  are  perishing  for  lack  of 
vision." 

The  isola-  "The  Slavs  are  orphans  in   this  country,"   he  said. 

tion   of   the  And  it  j    in  t  It  j        t  chiefly  that  they  have 

immigrant 

no  government  or  their  own,  concerned  tor  them  as  Italy 

is  concerned  for  the  Italians;  it  is  far  more  that  coming 
to  America  they  are  cut  off  from  the  life  of  their  old 
country,  without  getting  into  contact  with  the  true 
life  of  their  new  home,  from  which  they  are  shut  off 
by  language,  by  mutual  prejudice,  by  divergent  ideas. 
To  them,  both  parents  are  dead,  the  fatherland  that 
begot  them  and  the  foster-mother  that  supports  without 
cherishing  them. 

In  some  ways  this  isolation  is  harder  for  the  educated 
than  for  the  laborer.  A  man  like  Father  Tymkevich 
himself  is  in  a  position  of  almost  intolerable  loneliness. 
Intelligent,  sensitive,  separated  from  his  own  people  by 
all  that  separates  a  scholar  from  peasants,  he  was  a 
complete  stranger  in  a  community  unused  to  look  for 
friends  and  associates  among  foreigners. 

America's  What  then  ought  we  to  be  doing  for  these  strangers  in 

our  midst?  If  we  ought  not  to  try  to  "Americanize" 
them,  have  we  no  obligations  toward  them  at  all? 

It  is  obviously  our  plain  duty  to  give  the  immigrant 
(and  every  one  else)  fair  treatment  and  honest  govern- 


THE    QUESTION    OF    ASSIMILATION  425 

ment,  and  to  maintain  conditions  making  wholesome, 
decent  living  possible.  This  is  the  minimum  required 
at  our  hands,  not  by  the  Golden  Rule — that  asks  much 
more — but  by  the  most  elementary  ethic  of  civilization. 
Yet  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  simple,  fundamental  thing 
we  cannot  do.  It  is  not  in  our  power. 

We  can  and  must  do  what  in  the  end  will  be  a  better 
thing.  We  must  get  our  new  neighbors  to  work  with 
us  for  these  things.  If  their  isolation  is  not  to  continue, 
America  must  come  to  mean  to  them,  not  a  rival  nation 
ality  eager  to  make  them  forget  their  past,  and  offering 
them  material  bribes  to  induce  them  to  abandon  their 
ideals.  We  must  learn  to  connect  our  ideals  and  theirs, 
we  must  learn,  as  Miss  Addams  has  demonstrated,  to 
work  together  with  them  for  justice,  for  humane  con 
ditions  of  living,  for  beauty  and  for  true,  not  merely 
formal,  liberty. 

Clubs  and  classes,  libraries  and  evening  schools,  settle 
ments  and,  above  all,  movements  in  which  different 
classes  of  citizens  join  to  bring  about  specific  improve 
ments  in  government  or  in  living  conditions,  are  of  in 
finite  value  as  they  conduce  to  this  higher  unity,  in 
which  we  may  preserve  every  difference  to  which  men 
cling  with  affection,  without  feeling  ourselves  any  the 
less  fellow  citizens  and  comrades. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

STATISTICAL,  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   AND   OTHER 
NOTES 


POPULATION    OF    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY    BY 
LANGUAGE 

I.  POPULATION  OF  AUSTRIA  BY  LANGUAGE.     1900. 

The  facts  are  expressed  in  percentages.     Where  a  language  is 
spoken  by  less  than  one  per  cent  it  is  omitted. 

a.   NON-SLAVIC    LANGUAGES 


PROVINCE 

GERMAN 

ITALIAN- 
LADINISH 

ROUMANIAN 

MAGYAR 

Lower  Austria  

Q  C     O 

Upper  Austria  

OO  4. 

Salzburg  .  .        

QQ    ^ 

Styria  

68  7 

Carinthia  

74.  8 

Carniola  

«;.6 

Trieste  and  district  .... 
Goricia-Gradisca  
I  stria 

5-9 
1.6 

2    I 

77-4 
36.0 

4.O   S 

Tyrol  
Vorarlberg 

55-5 

QA      7 

44-3 

r   o 

Bohemia.  .  .  . 

"?7   3 

Moravia  

270 

Silesia  

4.4.  7 

Galicia  

2  O 

B  uko  wina 

•2T     7 

i  "? 

Dalmatia  

2.6 

All  Austria  

i*  8 

2   8 

Q 

.03 

429 


43° 


APPENDIX 

b.  SLAVIC  LANGUAGES 


PROVINCE 

BOHEMIAN, 
MORAVIAN, 
SLOVAK 

POLISH 

RUTHE- 
NIAN 

SLOVE 
NIAN 

SERVO- 
CROA 
TIAN 

Lower  Austria 

47 

Upper  Austria  
Salzburg  
Styria     .            

.  . 

•2,1.  1 

Carinthia 

2^.1 

Carniola 

04.2 

Trieste  and  district.  . 
Goricia-Gradisca  .... 
Istria     

•  • 

16.3 
62.4 
14.2 

42.6 

Tyrol            

Vorarlbersr      . 

Bohemia 

62   7 

Moravia  

71.4 

Silesia    

22.  0 

7-22 

Galicia         

OvV" 

c;4  8 

42.2 

B  uko  wina 

•}   7 

41.  1 

Dalmatia 

06  7 

All  Austria 

2  ?    2 

16  6 

IT.  2 

4  7 

2.8 

For   all 
Other  o. 


Austria:      German    35.8,    Slavic   60.4,    Italian    2.8, 


Austrian  Census  of  1900. 

Die  Summarischen  Ergebnisse  der  Volkszahlung,  page  xxxix. 


II.  CIVIL  POPULATION  OF  HUNGARY  BY  LANGUAGE.     1900. 


LANGUAGE 

KINGDOM  OF  HUNGARY, 
INCLUSIVE  OF  CROATIA- 
SLAVONIA 

HUNGARY  PROPER,  EX 
CLUSIVE  OF  CROATIA- 
SLAVONIA 

Number 

Per  Cent 

Number 

Per  Cent 

Ma^var 

8,679,014 
2,785,265 
2,114,423 
2,008,744 
1,670,905 
1,042,022 
427,825 
394,142 

45-4 
14.6 
11.  6 

10.5 
8.7 

5-5 

2.2 
2.1 

8,588,834 
2,784,726 
1,980,423 
1,991,402 
188,552 
434,641 
423,159 
329,837 

SJ-4 

16.7 
ii.  8 
11.9 
i.i 

2.6 

2-5 
2.0 

Roumanian  
German  *.  

Slovak  

Croatian         

Servian             

Ruthenian 

Other 

19,122,340 

100.  0 

16,721,574 

100.  0 

Hungarian  statistical  year  book,  Vol.  XIV,  page  20. 


APPENDIX  431 

The  racial  complexity  is  greater  than  is  indicated  by  the  sta 
tistics  of  language,  since  we  must  add  Jews  and  Gipsies.  Of 
the  former  there  were  826,222  registered  as  "Israelites"  in  Hun 
gary  proper  in  1900  besides  an  unknown  number  of  Christianized 
Jews.  Gipsies  according  to  a  special  count  in  1903  numbered 
274,940  of  whom  104,000  counted  themselves  as  Magyars.  If 
these  and  the  Jews  be  deducted  from  the  Magyar  population, 
this  would  lose  over  a  million  of  its  eight  or  nine  million  total. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  Hungarian  statistics  are 
the  subject  of  much  criticism  by  the  minor  races  of  Hungary  as 
understating  their  numbers.  Cf.  Capek:  "The  Slovaks  of  Hun 
gary,"  page  145. 

For  further  comment  on  the  validity  of  these  statistics  see 
above,  p.  12. 


II 
A  PEASANT  MILLIONAIRE 

The  following  picturesque  account  of  a  Hungarian  peasant 
appeared  in  the  New  York  Tribune: 

Johann  Bagi,  the  peasant  millionaire  of  Hungary,  never 
dropped  the  old  patriarchal  custom  of  presiding  at  table, 
around  which  the  men  and  women  and  boys  of  his  great  farm 
sat,  ranged  according  to  the  rank  held  by  each:  the  overseers 
nearest  the  youngest  members  of  the  master's  own  family,  the 
head  servants,  male  and  female,  next,  opposite  to  one  another. 
Then  came  the  keepers  of  the  linen,  the  fodder,  the  granaries, 
followed  by  the  chief  coachman  and  the  rest — ploughmen, 
horsemen,  cattle  keepers,  cheese  and  butter  women,  milkers, 
men  of  all  wrork,  and  maids  and  boys. 

Though  Johann  Bagi  and  his  family  and  visitors  ate  off 
silver  as  heavy  as  that  used  in  the  Hofburg,  he  never  wore  a 
coat  indoors,  nor  outside,  weather  permitting.  Once,  in  the 
good  old  absolutistic  days,  he  was  found  some  three  hours  from 
home,  tramping  his  fields,  when  a  gendarme  rode  up  and  asked 
for  his  passport. 

"Need  none,  as  I  am  on  my  own  ground." 

"Where  do  you  live?" 

"If  you  ride  sharply,  you  may  reach  the  house  in  two  hours 
and  a  half." 

"And  you  insist  that  this  is  your  property?" 

"Yes,  all  around  is  mine,  as  far  as  your  eyes  travel." 

Of  course  the  gendarme  thought  Johann  an  impostor,  and 
conducted  him  to  the  town  lock-up.  He  was  put  in  a  dirty 


432  APPENDIX 

cell,  and  immediately  asked  for  a  bucket  of  water  to  clean  up. 
While  thus  engaged,  the  governor  of  the  province  came  to  in 
spect  the  jail,  and  discovered  the  man,  with  whom  only  recently 
he  had  dined  at  the  emperor's  table. 

Soon  after  the  revolution  had  abolished  feudal  landlordism 
in  Hungary,  Johann's  former  master,  Count  George  Karolyi, 
got  into  trouble,  and  the  family  sent  for  a  Vienna  lawyer  of  high 
repute  to  straighten  out  matters. 

"I  came  to  see  if  I  could  not  be  of  some  service  to  the  high 
born  gentleman,"  said  Johann,  introducing  himself  to  the  new 
administrator. 

"My  good  man,"  replied  the  lawyer,  regarding  the  mil 
lionaire  peasant's  unpretentious  dress,  "no  use  troubling  thee. 
We  want  a  capitalist  with  about  200,000  florins  in  cash." 

"Sorry,"  said  Bagi,  "that  I  did  not  know  the  exact  figure. 
I  brought  what  I  had  in  the  local  bank — 180,000  florins — but 
the  rest  can  be  had  from  Budapest  in  about  three  days.  Will 
that  do,  your  honor?" 

Ill 
AUSTRIAN  TAXES* 

The  average  taxation  in  Austria  in  1899  was  38  crowns  per 
capita.  The  chief  taxes  and  their  sources  in  1903  were  as 
follows : 

DIRECT  TAXES  IN  MILLION  CROWNS 

Land 53.6 

House  tax 89.9 

Tax  on  industries 87.7 

Personal  income  tax 55.1 

Dividend  tax 8.6 

Salary  tax 2.2 

INDIRECT  TAXES  IN  MILLION  CROWNS 

From  alcohol 86.0 

beer 76.0 

sugar 100.9 

mineral  oil  (kerosene,  etc.) 18.8 

meat 16.3 

salt  monopoly 46.3 

tobacco  monopoly 225.2 

stamps  and  fees J54-7 

railway  tickets 16.8 

*  Twardowski,  Dr.  J. :  "  Statistische  Daten  iiber  Oesterreich." 
Vienna,  1902. 

"Finances  and  General  Economic  Conditions  of  Austria- 
Hungary  for  the  years  1900-1904."  (British)  Foreign  Office, 
April,  1905. 


APPENDIX 


433 


IV 

SLAVIC    IMMIGRANTS    NOT    COMING    TO    JOIN 
RELATIVES  OR  FRIENDS 

Based   on  data  in  Annual   Report  of  Commissioner  of  Im 
migration  for  year  ended  June  30,  1908,  page  15. 


NATIONALITY 

TOTAL  ADMITTED 

NOT  COMING  TO  JOIN  RELA 
TIVE  OR  FRIEND 

Bohemians  and   Moravi 
ans 

Number 
10,164 
20,472 

3-747 
68,105 
12,361 
16,170 

Number 

202 
IO06 

352 
IOIO 

389 
256 

Per  Cent 
1.9 
4-9 

9-3 
1.4 

3-1 
J-5 

Croatians    and    Sloveni 
ans 

Dalmatians,       Bosnians 
and  Herzegovinians  .  . 
Poles  

Ruthenians  
Slovaks  

Together  

131,019 

3215 

2.4 

Bulgarians,  Servians  and 
Montenegrins  
Russians  

18,246 
17,111 

2410 
1169 

13.2 
6.8 

Together  

35-357 

3579 

10.  I 

STATISTICAL    SOURCES   OF    INFORMATION   AS 
TO  EMIGRATION  FROM  AUSTRIA- 
HUNGARY 

There  are  several  sources  for  data  of  a  statistical  sort  in 
regard  to  Slavic  emigration  from  Austria-Hungary,  but  even 
taken  all  together  they  are  far  from  giving  complete  informa 
tion. 

The  American  immigration  and  census  figures  are  considered 
elsewhere;   the  European  sources  seem  to  be  as  follows: 
28 


434 


APPENDIX 


I.     "EMIGRATIONS-TABELLEN" 

Under  the  old  regime  the  right  to  emigrate  at  will  was  not 
admitted.  By  legislation  of  1820  and  1823  the  political  authori 
ties  were  required  to  keep  so-called  Emigrations  Tabellen,  or 
registers  of  all  persons  who  "betook  themselves  to  a  foreign 
state  with  the  intention  not  to  return"  whether  they  went  with 
or  without  official  permission.  It  was  not,  however,  till  1850 
that  these  tables  were  regularly  published  (and  then  apparently 
only  those  for  Austria).  These  figures  may  be  found  partly  in 
Mittheilungen  aus  dent  Gebiete  der  Statistik,  partly  in  the  successive 
numbers  of  the  Statistische  Monatschrift.  They  are  also  quoted 
at  some  length  in  Professor  Buzek's  "Das  Auswanderungs- 
problem"  and  a  few  data  are  given  above,  page  72. 

In  1867  freedom  of  emigration  was  granted  and  from  this 
time  these  official  figures  became  increasingly  unreliable,  until 
in  1884  they  were  given  up  as  too  remote  from  the  truth  to  be 
useful.  The  figures  show  province  of  origin,  sex  and  age,  but 
not  destination.  For  the  period  1850  to  1868  inclusive,  i.  e., 
the  time  during  which  the  data  are  comparatively  valid,  they 
are  as  follows: 

EMIGRATIONS  TABELLEN,  1850-1868 


PROVINCE 

MALE 

FEMALE 

TOTAL 

Lower  Austria 

7  r  7 

S8^ 

I    34.O 

Upper  Austria 

I    2  I  J. 

I  O2  7 

2   24.  1 

Salzburg  

218 

222 

44O 

Styria  

148 

IOO 

248 

Carinthia  

r  7 

-}  ? 

QO 

Carniola  

I  2C 

87 

222 

I  stria,  Gradisca-Goricia, 
Trieste  and  District  
Tvrol  and  Vorarlberg  

660 

i,86t; 

469 

962 

1,129 

2,827 

Bohemia 

22    3  ^  I 

2  I    2Q4. 

A  2    64.  ^ 

Moravia  

I,  365 

1,247 

2,608 

Silesia  
Galicia  and  Bukowina  

745 

04? 

609 

C  I  -3 

!>354 
1,4^6 

Dalmatia  

02 

94. 

126 

Total 

TO    ^  ^0 

27    I?6 

r  7   726 

BY  AGE — ALL  AUSTRIA 


AGE 
0—7  vears 

NUMBER 

7—17 

12  683 

I  7  —  4.0 

2  ?.  7O8 

4.0—  <o 

6  8^0 

CQ  + 

2  66?. 

Total.  . 


57,726 


APPENDIX  435 

Although  the  law  requiring  the  registration  of  emigrants 
referred  to  the  monarchy,  and  therefore  included  Hungary, 
the  Hungarian  data  are  not  available  so  far  as  known  to  me. 


II.    FIGURES  FROM  THE  AUTHORITIES  AT  THE  PORTS 
OF  EMBARKATION 

As  a  second  source  of  information  we  have  the  figures  of  the 
authorities  at  the  various  ports  which  serve  as  gateways  for 
the  floods  of  emigrants.  Until  comparatively  recently  this 
meant  for  Austro-Hungarian  emigration  mainly  Hamburg  and 
Bremen.  Many,  however,  who  started  from  these  German  ports 
went  to  England  and  made  the  journey  to  America  thence. 
In  later  years  Amsterdam,  Rotterdam  and  Antwerp,  Havre 
and  Marseilles,  and  quite  recently  Genoa,  Naples,  Fiume  and 
Trieste,  have  all  become  important  points  of  departure. 

Since  the  Austrian  government  felt  the  need  of  the  informa 
tion  which  the  old  Emigrations  Tabellen  had  at  least  essayed 
to  provide,  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  in  1889  requested  the 
various  ports  to  furnish  more  complete  data  and  itself  collated 
these  figures  for  its  own  use.  They  appear  in  the  Oester- 
reichische  Statistische  Handbuch.  The  International  Statis 
tical  Institute  in  1891  also  passed  a  resolution  looking  toward 
completer  and  more  uniform  reports.  Different  countries, 
however,  still  differ  in  the  fullness  of  the  records  which  they  keep 
of  emigrants  leaving  their  ports.  In  Germany  the  embarka 
tion  figures  are  published  in  the  yearly  Berichten  des  Deiitschen 
Reichscommissars  fur  das  Auswanderungswesen  and  similarly 
in  various  other  countries.  England  only  distinguishes  emi 
grants  as  English  and  foreign  (which  is  of  the  less  importance 
here  as  Austrian  emigrants  going  via  England  have  already 
been  registered  at  a  continental  port),  but  generally  emigrants 
are  distinguished  by  countries,  Austria  and  Hungary  being  given 
separately.  For  a  study  on  racial  lines,  however,  like  the  present 
one,  such  data  afford  little  information,  as  an  "Austrian"  or  a 
"Hungarian"  maybe  of  any  one  of  many  nationalities. 

The  following  figures  for  the  years  1902-1907,  are  taken  from 
the  Oesterreichisch.es  Statistisches  Handbuch  for  1907  (page  46), 
and  are  based  on  the  figures  furnished  by  the  authorities  of  the 
different  ports.  They  give  a  good  idea  of  the  relative  importance 
of  different  routes,  which  however  differs  for  emigrants  from 
different  provinces,  the  Fiume  route  being  convenient  for  Istria, 
Dalmatia  and  Croatia,  German  routes  for  Bohemia,  and  so  on. 
The  corresponding  figures  for  Hungary  are  published  'in  the 
Hungarian  statistical  yearbooks  of  which  I  have  used  the  official 
French  version,  the  Annuaire  Statistique  Hongrois. 


APPENDIX 


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I 

APPENDIX 


III. 


FIGURES    FROM    GERMAN    PORTS    FOR    EMIGRANTS    FROM 
HUNGARY. — BY  DESTINATIONS 


DESTINATION 

AVERAGE 
1896-1900 

AVERAGE 
1901-1905 

1906 

1907 

Great  Britain  
United  States  
British  N.  A  
Brazil 

64 
22,967 

101 
I  4 

133 
73,066 

652 

24. 

25 
98,537 
227 

2 

1  1 
111,634 

302 

Argentina  

Q 

610 

1,  660 

S?6 

Africa  

tro 

58 

I 

i 

Total  

2  3  2O  ? 

74    ^  4  3 

I  OO  J.  ^  2 

112   787 

IV. 


Year  Book,  1007,  page  65. 

TOTAL  OVERSEA  EMIGRATION  FROM  HUNGARY  BY  YEARS 
AS  REPORTED  FROM  PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION 


YEAR 

1896 

1897 

1898 

1899 

1900.. 

1901.. 

1902.  . 

1903-  • 
1904.. 

I905- 
1906 


NUMBER 

24,846 

I4>31° 
22,965 

43.394 
54,767 
71,474 
91,762 

H9,944 
97.340 

170,43° 
178,170 


1907  ................................       209,169 

Total  ............................  1,098,571 

Year  Book,  1907,  page  65. 

The  Hamburg  authorities  give  figures  showing  the  numbers 
embarking  for  America  direct  and  via  England.  In  1882  the 
figures  were  respectively  9,257  and  6,757,  while  in  1901  with 
12,493  g°mg  direct  across  the  ocean,  only  26  were  going  via 
England.* 


III.     THE  CENSUS 

Important  information  can  be  deduced  from  the  Austrian 
and  Hungarian  census  returns.  By  comparing  the  population 
at  a  given  date  with  that  of  a  previous  date  plus  the  excess  of 
births  ^over  deaths  during  the  intervening  period  there  can  be 
found  the  loss  or  gain  which  is  to  be  attributed  to  migration  — 


"hirring:  "  Die  Auswanderung  aus  Uugarn,"  page  25. 


APPENDIX  439 

that  is,  to  the  excess  of  emigration  over  immigration  or  the 
reverse.  The  difficulties  in  using  this  information  (apart  from 
complications  of  detail,  as  for  instance  the  presence  of  bodies  of 
soldiers)  are  three.  First,  if  there  has  been  a  loss  of  population 
no  indication  is  given  as  to  where  the  missing  population  has 
gone.  It  may  be  in  South  America  or  it  may  be  just  over  the 
boundary.  Second,  only  net  results  are  shown,  so  that  any 
influx  of  immigrants  (as  for  instance  the  considerable  immigra 
tion  of  Italians  into  Austria)  will  neutralize  and  hide  a  corre 
sponding  number  of  emigrants.  Third,  internal  migrations  may 
confuse  the  significance  of  the  net  results.  For  instance,  a 
rural  district  might  show  a  loss  of  population  and  a  city  district 
show  a  gain  and  yet  the  city  might  have  been  sending  emigrants 
out  of  the  country  (though  fewer  than  were  coming  in  to  it 
from  elsewhere),  while  the  country  might  have  sent  none  abroad 
in  spite  of  its  diminished  population.  While  this  is  not  a  very 
likely  supposition,  the  fact  that  there  is  no  way  of  controlling 
such  facts  is  a  serious  defect  in  this  method  as  a  means  of  study 
ing  emigration.  Some  data  obtained  in  this  way  will  be  found 
for  Austria  on  page  48.  For  Hungary  see  page  104. 

The  corresponding  figures  for  Croatia-Slavonia  are  given  in 
Appendix  XIII,  page  453. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  how  the  loss  of  population  in  Hun 
gary  differs  from  the  numbers  of  emigrants  registered  as  em 
barking.  See  Thirring,  "Die  Auswanderung  aus  Ungarn," 
pages  1 9  and  1 1 . 

EMBARKATIONS  or  DECREASE  or  POPULATION 

HUNGARIAN  OF  HUNGARY  BY  EXCESS 
SUBJECTS  or  EMIGRATION  OVER 

PERIOD  IMMIGRATION 

1881-1890 186,822  -195,209 

1891-1900 285,317  —184,766 

Total 472,139  -379.975 

In  the  first  decade  more  are  lacking  than  the  transatlantic 
movement  accounts  for,  i.  e.,  many  emigrated  elsewhere  than 
to  America;  in  the  second  period  on  the  contrary,  more  are 
counted  as  embarking  than  the  net  loss  of  population  allows  for, 
which  must  mean  that  many  returned  and  many  embarked 
more  than  once. 


IV.     SPECIAL  INQUIRIES  AS  TO  EMIGRATION  AT  THE 

POINT  OF  ORIGIN 

For  Austria  in  general  I  have  found  no  special  data  of  this 
sort,  except  the  figures  for  Carniola  (so  far  as  I  know  unpub 
lished)  which  are  given  in  Appendix  XII. 


440 


APPENDIX 


For  Hungary  the  situation  is  quite  different  since  here  there 
are  two  special  independent  sources  of  statistics  as  to  emi 
grants;  namely,  reports  of  passes  issued,  and  reports  from  local 
authorities  as  to  those  known  to  have  emigrated  from  the  place. 
As  the  year  1904  marks  a  change  of  law  which  affected  these 
immigration  statistics,  it  will  be  well  to  first  consider  data 
collected  previous  to  that  time. 

HUNGARY;    BEFORE  AUGUST,   1904 
( i )  Statistics  of  Passes 

Since  up  to  August,  1904,  passes  were  to  be  had  only  from  the 
Ministry  of  the  Interior  at  considerable  expense  of  time  and 
money,  emigrants  as  a  matter  of  practice  very  generally  took 
their  chances  and  emigrated  without  the  required  papers.  One 
hears  of  men  satisfying  the  request  of  German  officials  for  papers 
with  any  sort  of  Magyar  documents  that  they  might  happen  to 
have,  all  being  alike  unintelligible. 

The  data  drawn  from  passes  were  unreliable  both  because 
many  thus  went  without  them  and  also  because  men  who  never 
emigrated  often  procured  passes,  expecting  to  emigrate  or  on 
the  chance  of  wanting  to  do  so  suddenly. 

(2)  Reports  from  Local  Authorities 

From  1899  on,  the  local  authorities  (the  town  clerk,  or  in 
the  cities,  the  burgomaster)  were  required  to  fill  out  reports  for 
all  persons  emigrating  whether  with  or  without  a  passport. 
These  were  quite  full  as  to  the  points  to  be  covered  but  failed  to 
cover  nearly  all  who  actually  emigrated.  For  instance  in  1903 
the  figures  for  passports,  incomplete  as  these  were  as  a  measure 
of  emigration,  proved  to  be  larger  by  over  a  third  than  the 
figures  for  those  reported  as  emigrating  with  or  without  passports. 
Thirring  (pages  19-20)  gives  the  following  figures  showing 
how  far  both  sets  of  Hungarian  figures  fall  below  those  of  the 
ports  of  embarkation : 


YEAR 

FIGURES  OF  EUROPEAN 
PORTS  OF  EMBARKA 
TION 

HUNGARIAN  FIGURES 

Passes  to  America 

Oversea  emigrants 

1899  
1900  .... 
1901  .... 
1902  .... 

43.393 
54,767 
70,941 
91,762 

36,431 
44,105 

55,724 
77,249 

26,515 
31,092 
45,  J96 
56,346 

HUNGARY  SINCE  AUGUST,   1904 

(i)  Statistics  of  Passes 

In  August,  1904,  a  change  of  law  went  into  effect.     Instead  of 
passes  being  issued  only  by  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  they 


APPENDIX  441 

were  now  to  be  issued  in  cities  by  police  authorities,  elsewhere  by 
a  county  official,  and  were  made  procurable  on  written  applica 
tion  at  a  cost  of  only  one  crown  or  about  twenty  cents.  I  was 
told  that  under  the  new  order  few  went  without  passes,  and  that 
those  going  via  Fiume  all  procured  them,  since  the  officers  of 
the  recently  established  Cunard  service  from  that  port  absolutely 
required  these  papers. 

(2)  Reports  from  Local  Authorities 

The  new  legislation  requires  reports  from  the  local  authorities 
as  to  (a)  those  who  have  gone  without  passes  and  (b)  those  who 
have  returned.  It  may  be  practicable  to  procure  this  informa 
tion  in  small  places  where  everyone's  affairs  are  known,  but  in 
a  city  it  is  impossible  to  keep  track  of  everyone  in  spite  of  the 
elaborate  Hungarian  system  of  police  registry,  which  obliges 
weary  travelers  to  report  their  arrival  often  before  they  have 
had  time  to  wash  their  hands  or  even  get  off  their  gloves.  An 
emigrant  from  a  city,  or  one  who  leaves  a  village  home  and 
returns,  as  many  are  said  to  do,  to  Budapest,  is  likely  to  escape 
notice  and  in  so  far  to  invalidate  the  returns. 

PUBLICATION  OF  HUNGARIAN  DATA 
Since  January,  1905,  the  official  monthly  publication  of  the 

Central    Statistical    Commission    has    been    printing    all    these 

various  data  as  they  come   in,  and  the  Hungarian   statistical 

year  books  also  give  them  in  great  fullness. 

The  last  year  book  that  I  have  seen  contains  among  others 

the  following  data,  all  relating  to  1907 : 

I.    TOTAL  EMIGRATION  FOR  1907  FROM  HUNGARY  PROPER  AND 

FROM  CROATIA-SLAVONIA. 

A.     By  Sex 

FROM  FROM 

HUNGARY  PROPER  CROATIA-SLAVONIA 

Men 119,712  21,265 

Women 47»777  4,228 


Total 167,489  25,493 

Per  1000  of  population 9.3  9.8 

B.     By  Language 

Magyar 57.974  765 

German 35.721  1,890 

Slovak 32,439  298 

Roumanian 26,481  10 

Ruthenian 4,939  149 

Croatian 1,128  15,461 

Servian 7,020  6,494 

Other 1,787  426 


442 


APPENDIX 


C.     By  Destination 
America 149,372 


Germany 


6,644 


Roumania 7.74° 


22,828 
7io 


794 
1,767 
1,172 


660 
1,228 


Other  Balkan  States 

Other  European  States 

Other  parts  of  the  world. . . . 

Hungarian  statistical  year  book,  1907,  page  66. 

These  data  are  also  given  in  full  by  counties  and  cities. 


II.     HEADS    OF    FAMILIES    OR    PERSONS  EMIGRATING 
INDEPENDENTLY 

A.     By  Age 
EMIGRATING  TO  AMERICA 

FROM  FROM 

AGE                                               HUNGARY  PROPER  CROATIA-SLAVONIA 

Under  20 29,300  6,021 

20-29 47,868  7.3°° 

3°-39 32,016  5-°39 

40-49 i5.28S  2,708 

Over  50 1,928  390 


126,397 

B.      By  Occupation 


2i,458 


OCCUPATION* 

FROM  HUNGARY  PROPER 

FROM  CROATIA- 
SLAVONIA 

Emigrants  to 
America 

Slovak  Emigrants 
(to  all  Destinations) 

Emigrants  to 
America 

Agriculture 
Farmers*  .... 
Laborers   and 
servants  .  .  . 
Miners  
Industrial      em 
ployers  
Commercial  em 
ployers  

12,345  } 
\  84,134 
7L789  J 
805 

2,989 
283 

14,964 

369 
14,952 
6,284 
1,617 

4,587  1 
\  J7-334 
12,747  J 
386 

56i 

Si 

2,483 

24 
4,839 
1,822 

4i5 

12,308  ] 
}•  19,279 

6.971  J 

7 

349 
J9 

I,2OI 

35 
259 
160 
149 

Employed        i  n 
commerce  and 
transportation 
Intellectual  pro 
fessions 

Laborers  

Domestics  ervice 
Other  

Total  

126,397 

27>9r5 

21,458 

Hungarian  statistical  year  book,  i 


69. 

Figures  are  also   given  by  religious  denominations  and  by 
months. 

*  The  French  term  is  Production  du  Sol  (Patrrons). 


APPENDIX  443 

III.     RETURNED  EMIGRANTS 

To  HUNGARY  To  CROATIA- 
PROPER  SLAVONIA 
A.  By  Sex 

Men 37,721  7,296 

Women 5-807  412 


Total 43.528  7,708 

Per  1000  of  population 1.4  3.0 


B.  By  Language 

Magyars 14,730  136 

Germans 6,226  315 

Slovaks 11,281  50 

Roumanians 6,842  i 

Ruthenians 2,336  35 

Croatians 345  5,ioo 

Servians 1,270  2,000 

Other 498  71 

43,528  7,708 
C.  By  Country  whence  Returned 

From  America 40,483  6,692 

Other 3,045  1,016 

Hungarian  statistical  year  book,  1907,  page  72. 

These  data  are  also  given  by  counties  and  cities,  and  in  an 
other  table  ages,  occupations,  and  religion  are  given  by  nation 
alities. 

IV.     DATA  AS  TO  PASSPORTS 

HUNGARY  PROPER     CROATIA-SLAVONIA 

Total  passports 237,607  49,461 

passports  for  emigration.  .  .178,299  47,534 
persons  thereby  authorized 

to  travel. 301,401  56,599 

Total  persons  thereby  authorized 

to  emigrate  to  America.  .  198,886  42,763 
Hungarian  statistical  year  book,  igc^.'page  77. 

These  figures  are  also  given  by  counties  and  cities. 


V.     OTHER  SOURCES 

An  additional  source  of  information  are  the  data  furnished  by 
the  Cunard  Line  as  to  passengers  going  and  returning  in  its 
Fiume  vessels. 

The  figures  as  to  persons  naturalized  or  renouncing  allegiance 
(pertes  de  nationality)  are  also  published,  but  in  1907  the  cases 
of  loss  of  nationality  ascribed  to  America  are  three!  The 
corresponding  Austrian  figures  are  equally  unenlightening. 


444  APPENDIX 

In  addition  to  strictly  statistical  material  Consular  Reports 
sometimes  supply  valuable  material. 

The  Statistische  Monatsschrift  publishes  a  continuous  series  of 
reports  on  emigration,  which  so  far  as  America  is  concerned  are 
largely  a  reproduction  or  working  over  of  American  statistics,  of 
the  data  from  the  ports  of  embarkation  and  so  forth.  Occasion 
ally,  however,  they  contain  valuable  additional  material.  A  com 
plete  list  of  these  articles  will  be  found  in  the  Bibliography 
under  Statistische  Monatsschrift. 

For  Carniola  and  Croatia  further  statistical  data,  besides  that 
in  the  text,  will  be  found  in  Appendix  XII  and  Appendix  XIII 
respectively. 


VI 
SOME  BOHEMIAN  NURSERY  RHYMES 

I 

(To  be  said  pointing  to  the  eyes,  cheeks,  etc.,  with  appropriate  pantomime.) 
'  Here  are  two  little  candles,  [eyes} 
'  Here  are  two  little  cushions,  [cheeks] 
'  Here  is  the  pulpit, 
'  Here  is  the  priest, 
'  Here  is  the  little  grave, 
'Here  is  the  little  bell,  ting  a  ling  a  ling." 

II 

'The  little  mouse  was  cooking  porridge,  [to  be  said  tickling  the 

palm  of  the  child's  hand] 
'  In  an  iron  sauce  pan ; 
'  When  it  was  done, 
'  She  gave  it  around ; 
'To  this  one  she  gave  it  with  a  little  spoon  [counting  on  the 

•fingers  and  toes] 

'To  this  one  she  gave  it  with  a  little  fork, 
'To  this  one  she  gave  it  with  a  little  stirrer, 
'  To  this  one  she  gave  it  with  a  little  ladle, 
'  And  to  this  one  she  did  not  give  any, 
'And  she  ran  and  she  ran  to  camp  [running  the  fingers  over  the 

child's  side  and  tickling] 
'  For  the  sack  of  ginger 
'Till  she  got  here"  [tickling  under  the  arm]. 


APPENDIX  445 

III 

' '  There  was  a  little  house, 
"In  the  little  house  was  a  little  table, 
"On  the  little  table  a  little  dish, 
' '  In  the  little  dish  a  little  water, 
' '  In  the  little  water  a  little  fish. 
"Where  is  the  little  fish? 
"Pussy  ate  it. 
"Where  is  pussy? 
' '  She  ran  into  the  woods. 
"Where  are  the  woods? 
"They  are  burned  to  dust. 
"Where  is  the  dust? 
"The  water  carried  it  away. 
"Where  is  the  water? 
"The  cattle  drank  it  up. 
' '  Where  are  the  cattle  ? 
' '  The  masters  ate  them. 
' '  Where  are  the  masters  ? 
"They  lie  in  the  churchyard." 

The  first  two  of  these  jingles  are  translated  from  an  oral 
version  given  me  in  New  York. 

Further  Bohemian  nursery  rhymes  may  be  found  in  the  little 
Slabikaf  (or  primer),  with  illustrations  by  the  well  known  Bohe 
mian  artist  Ales,  which  is  used  by  many  Bohemian- American 
classes.  (See  Bibliography  under  Frumar.) 


VII 
SLOVAK  POPULATION 

I  borrow  the  following  data  from  Mr.  Seton- Watson's  "Racial 
Problems  in  Hungary,"  pages  11—12. 

"The  Slovaks  form  an  overwhelming  majority  of  the  popu 
lation  in  seven  counties: 


Arva  

SLOVAKS 
80  456 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  SLOVAKS 
04-7 

PERCENTAGE 
OF  MAGYARS 
1.7 

Trencsen  
Lipt6  
Z61yom  
Tur6cz  

265,838 
75.739 
110,633 
38,218 

92.8 

92.5 
89.4 
73.6 

2.8 

3-3 
7.2 
4.2 

Nyitra  

.  .  312,167 

7^-1 

18.8 

Saros.  . 

.  .  114.132 

66.1 

6.1 

446  APPENDIX 

"In  this  territory,  which  covers  an  area  of  22,380  square 
kilometers,  there  are  thus  997,183  Slovaks,  side  by  side  with 
114,310  Magyars  and  71,497  Germans.  Of  these  latter  races, 
however,  the  majority  live  upon  the  racial  frontier,  and  thus 
the  redistribution  of  the  counties  on  a  racial  basis  would  leave 
a  million  Slovaks  faced  by  a  minority  of  72,993  Magyars  and 
Germans  (seven  per  cent). 

"  In  five  other  counties  the  Slovaks  form  over  one-third  of  the 
population : 

Szepes 99,240  58.2 

gars ••••• 94,777  57-5 

Pozsony  or  Pressburg 153,466  51.1 

Gomor 74,417  40.6 

Hont 45>I73  39-5 


"In  these  counties  there  are  no  fewer  than  347,421  Magyars 
and  60,932  Germans;  but  as  all  these  counties  are  situated  upon 
the  linguistic  frontier,  redistribution  would  in  their  case  also 
bring  about  a  separation  of  the  two  races,  and  merely  leave  small 
German  minorities  in  the  counties  of  Szepes  and  Bars. 

"There  are  also  substantial  Slovak  minorities  in  the  counties 
of  Zemplen  (106,064,  or  32.4  per  cent),  Ung  (42,582,  or  28.1 
per  cent),  N6gra"d  (64,083,  or  26.9  per  cent)  and  Abauj-Torna 
(35,809,  or  22.9  per  cent).  On  the  west,  the  Slovaks  extend  into 
Moravia,  from  the  neighborhood  of  Hodonin  (Goding)  almost  as 
far  as  Kremsier,  and  in  recent  years  this  tiny  territory  has  be 
come  a  focus  of  Slovak  national  life,  where  the  forces  repressed 
in  Hungary  by  the  reactionary  policy  of  the  Magyars  are  able 
to  expand  freely.  On  the  east  the  Slovaks  are  bounded  by  the 
Ruthenes;  but  the  racial  frontier  has,  during  the  past  genera 
tion,  moved  slowly  but  steadily  eastwards,  at  the  expense  of  the 
latter  race,  which  allows  itself  to  be  assimilated  more  easily 
than  either  the  Slovaks  or  the  Roumanians. 

"In  addition  to  the  main  Slovak  districts,  there  are  various 
racial  islets  in  the  neighborhood  of  Budapest,  Koma'rom  (Komorn) 
and  Godollo,  and  in  the  rich  plains  of  the  Banat  and  the  Ba"cska, 
near  Nagy  Becskerek  and  Neusatz  (Ujvidek).  The  county  of 
Pest  contains  33,299  Slovaks,  in  addition  to  24,726  in  the  capital 
itself:  the  county  of  Bekes,  64,343  (or  23.2  per  cent);  Bacs, 
28,317;  Csandd,  17,239;  and  Torontal,  14,761.  Despite  their 
isolation  these  little  colonies  are  strongly  Slovak  in  feeling,  and 
being  more  prosperous  and  independent  than  their  northern 
kinsmen,  have  succeeded  in  returning  a  Slovak  member  of 
Parliament  (in  Kolpeny,  county  of  Bacs-Bodrog)." 

See  also  Professor  Niederle's  Ndrodopisnd  Mapa  Uherskych 


APPENDIX  447 

Slovaku.  (Ethnographical  Map  of  the  Hungarian  Slovaks  on 
the  basis  of  the  census  of  1900.)  For  the  ethnography  of 
Hungary  see  also  above,  page  31;  Map  III,  page  32;  and  page  86. 


VIII 
STUDIES  OF  SLOVAK  EMIGRATION 

Besides  the  official  statistics  there  are  two  studies  of  Hun 
garian  emigration  of  some  importance  in  Magyar.  One  is  by 
Dr.  Gustav  Thirring,  "A  Magyarorszagi  Kiva~ndorlas  es  A  Ktil- 
foldi  Magyarsag,"  Pp.  x,  366;  tables,  charts  and  maps.  Kilian, 
Budapest,  1904.  A  review  of  Thirring's  book  appeared  in  Tar- 
sadalompolitikai  Kozlemenyek  (Socialpolitische  Mittheilungen) 
i,  2.  Budapest,  1904. 

The  gist  of  Dr.  Thirring's  article  also  appeared  in  German 
as  "Die  Auswanderung  aus  Ungarn;  Beitrage  zur  Statistik  und 
topographischen  Verteilung  der  Auswanderung "  in  the  Bulletin 
de  la  Societe  Hongroise  de  Geographic,  Vol.  xxx,  1902  (Also 
separately  printed). 

The  other  is  by  Mr.  Lorant  Hegedus,  "A  Magyarok  Kiva~n- 
dorla"sa  Amerikaba.  Az  Amerikai  Magyar  Telepek — A  Felvidek 
Nyomora —  Kivandorlas  es  Bevandorlas  Szabalyozasa."  (The 
Emigration  of  Hungarians  to  America — The  American-Hun 
garian  settlements — The  Misery  of  Upper  Hungary — The  Regu 
lation  of  Emigration  and  Immigration).  Pp.  102,  Budapest,  1899. 
Reprinted  from  the  Budapest  Szemle  (Review).  Mr.  Hegedus 
visited  Magyar  and  other  Hungarian  colonies  in  America. 
Although  I  do  not  read  Magyar,  by  having  this  and  the  preced 
ing  book  translated  to  me  I  was  able  to  make  some  use  of  them. 

In  Slovak  is  Dr.  Emil  Stodola's  "Prispevok  ku  Statistike 
Slovenska"  (Contributions  to  Slovak  Statistics).  Pp.  31.  Tur- 
ciansky  Sv.  Martin,  1902.  (Part  IV,  Emigration  to  America,  pp. 
14-21.)  Useful  also  are  Dr.  Stodola's  articles  in  Die  Politik  of 
Prague  under  dates  June  18,  20  and  21,  1902.  Another  source  is 
a  manuscript  account  of  Slovak  emigration,  kindly  prepared  for 
me  by  Mr.  Miloslav  Rybak,  mining  engineer. 


448  APPENDIX 

IX 
SLOVAK  MEMORIALS  PUBLISHED  IN  AMERICA 

The  following  protests  as  to  Hungarian  policy  have  been 
published  by  Slovaks  in  the  United  States. 

"  Memorial  presented  by  the  Roman  Catholic  priests  of  Slovak 
nationality  to  their  Eminences  the  Cardinal  Archbishop,  Arch 
bishops  and  Bishops  of  the  United  States."  Pp.  6.  Wilkes- 
Barre,  Dec.  i,  1902.  (Signed  by  twenty-nine  priests). 

"Memorial  addressed  by  American  citizens  of  Slovak  birth  to 
the  Hungarian  members  of  the  Interparliamentary  Peace  Con 
gress  held  in  the  city  of  St  Louis,  Mo.,  September,  1904." 
Printed  in  English,  French  and  Magyar,  and  signed  by  six 
presidents  of  Slovak  [societies  (representing  a  combined  member 
ship  of  65,000),  and  by  six  editors. 

"Hungary  Exposed."  No  date,  author,  nor  place  of  publica 
tion  is  given.  This  is  the  republication  in  Magyar,  with  an 
English  translation  and  an  introduction,  of  "Ministerial  Com 
munication  No.  393.  Directed,  Feb.  4  of  the  current  year,  by 
the  Hungarian  Minister  of  Religion  and  Instruction  to  the  Car 
dinal  Prince  Primate,  Archbishop  of  Esztergom  in  reference  to 
the  Spiritual  Care  of  Hungarians  who  have  emigrated  to  Amer 
ica."  The  complaint  is  that  this  secret  order  recommended 
that  the  priesthood  in  America  be  used  for  purposes  of  Magyariza- 
tion  and  espionage,  and  that  newspapers  are  supported  to  the 
same  end. 


X 

A  CASE  OF  HUNGARIAN  POLITICAL  PERSECU 
TION 

Some  of  the  grounds  on  which  three  young  Slovak  theological 
students  were  expelled  from  a  Hungarian  Catholic  College  in 
Vicuna  in  1906  are  grotesque  to  the  point  of  the  incredible. 
It  was  said  that  they  (a)  ' '  formed  a  special  group  in  which  they 
aired  their  favorite  views  and  drew  suspicion  on  themselves  by 
their  somewhat  retiring  manners;"  (b)  that  they  nevertheless 
propagated  Slovak  national  ideas,  and  that  one  of  them  admitted 


APPENDIX  449 

this,  so  that  inquiry  was  unnecessary,  though  it  was  actually 
held;  further  (c)  that  they  were  in  direct  intercourse  with  two 
Slovak  nationalists  "which  is  in  itself  a  sufficient  reason  for 
expulsion  from  an  institute  which  aims  at  training  patriotic 
pupils";  (d)  "though  in  the  institution  every  foreign  (sic) 
language  is  forbidden,  they  smuggled  in  Mr.  S.  and  talked  Slovak 
with  him."  The  students  were  not  heard  in  defence.  One  of 
them  whose  Rector  spoke  of  his  mores  optimes  et  pietatem  in- 
signem  is  now  a  priest  in  America.  See  Seton- Watson,  pages 
213-4. 

Mr.  Rovnianek,  the  Pittsburgh  banker,  came  to  America  in  a 
similar  way,  having  been  expelled  from  a  seminary,  as  I  have 
been  told,  because  a  Slovak  book  was  found  in  his  trunk. 


XI 

A  RUTHENIAN  POET  IN  CANADA 

A  series  of  articles  called  "Five  Days  in  Galicia,"  by  E.  W. 
Thomson,  appeared  in  the  Boston  Transcript,  the  first  one  under 
date  of  Oct.  17,  1905.  The  following  passage  seems  worth 
quoting: 

"How  the  Galicians,  whether  they  be  German,  Polish,  or 
Russian,  feel  toward  their  new  country  may  best  be  told  by 
their  own  poet  Edmonton  and  the  surrounding  region  know 
him  only  as  Michael  Gowda,  interpreter  to  the  Bellamy  Agricul 
tural  Implement  Company,  and  a  very  keen,  clever  stump 
speaker  at  election  times.  He  was  a  school  teacher  in  Galicia, 
and  has  been  out  here,  after  escaping  from  the  Austrian  army, 
some  eight  years.  Michael  has  translated  "Snowbound"  and 
twenty  more  of  Whittier's  poems  into  Russian  verse.  He  is 
engaged  on  an  extensive  translation,  into  English  prose,  of  the 
popular  poetry  of  his  Slav  countrymen.  Moreover,  he  is,  unless  I 
mistake,  a  genuine  poet  himself.  Here  is  a  rough  versification, 
made  by  myself,  from  his  prose  English  translation  of  his  poem 
to  Canada. : 

To  CANADA 

0  free  and  fresh — home  Canada!    can  we, 

Born  far  o'er  seas,   call  thee  our   country  dear? 

1  know  not  whence  nor  how  that  right  may  be 

Attained  through  sharing  blessings  year  by  year. 
29 


45°  APPENDIX 

We  were  not  reared  within  thy  broad  domains, 
Our  father's  graves  and  corpses  lie  afar, 

They  did  not  fall  for  freedom  on  thy  plains, 

Nor  we  pour  out  our  blood  beneath  thy  star. 

Yet  we  have  liberty  from  sea  to  sea, 

Frankly   and   true   you   gave   us   manhood's   share, 
We  who,  like  wandering  birds,  flew  hopefully 

To  gather  grain  upon  thy  acres  fair. 

From   ancient   worlds   by    Wrong   opprest   we   swarmed 

Many  as  ants,  to  scatter  on  thy  land; 
Each  to  the  place  you  gave,  aided,  unharmed, 

And  here  we  fear  not  kings  nor  nobles  grand. 

And  are  you  not,  O  Canada,  our  own? 

Nay,  we  are  still  but  holders  of  thy  soil, 
We  have  not  bought  by  sacrifice  and  groan 

The   right   to   boast   the   country   where   we   toil. 

But,  Canada,  in  Liberty  we  work  till  death, 

Our  children  shall  be  free  to  call  thee  theirs, 

Their  own  dear  land,   where,   gladly  drawing  breath, 

Their  parents  found  safe  graves,  and  left  strong  heirs 

To  Homes  and  native  freedom,  and  the  heart 

To  live,  and  strive,  and  die  if  need  there  be, 

In  standing  manfully  by  Honor's  part 

To  save  the  country  that  has  made  us  free. 

They  shall  as  brothers  be  to  all  the  rest, 

Unshamed  to  own  the  blood  from  which  they  sprang, 
True  to  their  Father's  Church,  and  His  behest 

For  whom  the  bells  of  yester  Christmas  rang. 


APPENDIX 


451 


XII 

EMIGRATION    FROM    CARNIOLA  TO    AMERICA. 
Data  from  inquiry  carried  on  through  the  post  office 
by  the  Governor  of  Carniola  since  1893 

I.     EMIGRATION,  BY  DESTINATIONS,  1893-1904 


EMIGRAI 

SJT8   TO 

YEAR 

North 
America 

Brazil 

South 
America 

Total  Emi 
gration  to 
America 

1893  (last  half)  

414 

3 

I 

418 

1894  

1895  
1896                  

203 

H45 
162  < 

60 
8^2 

118 
441 

210 
1329 

2808 

1807 

078 

06 

44 

1  118 

1808 

1674. 

I  7 

1601 

1800 

3287 

6 

^8 

n  31 

I  QOO 

28=14 

2 

i 

28^7 

I  QO  I 

2189 

6 

2  I  Q  ^ 

I  QO2 

^  1  10 

^  I  I  Q 

I  QO  3 

6<  1  1 

I 

6^12 

I  QO4 

2883 

2883 

Total  (n£)  years). 

28,882 

IO24 

649 

3°.  56i 

II. 


NUMBER    OF    MARRIED    AND    SINGLE    MEN,    WOMEN    AND 
CHILDREN  EMIGRATING,  1893-1904 


YEAR 

SINGLE 

MARRIED 

WIVES 

CHILDRE'N 

OTHER 
MEMBERS 

OF 

HOUSE 
HOLD 

(Ange- 
horige) 

1893  (last  half). 
1804 

218 

118 

140 
61 

13 

-7 

47 

2  s 

i8oq 

726 

426 

^6 

121 

2O 

1806.  . 

i  307 

819 

187 

^44 

4  I 

1807.  . 

^63 

336 

^6 

181 

2 

1898  
1809.  . 

1039 

I  046 

532 
1  148 

15 
63 

I  01 

173 

4 
i 

1900  

i66s 

080 

24 

174 

r 

1901  

i  ?8  3 

686 

27 

08 

I 

I  QO2 

7^26 

T  t  CQ 

63 

2  c  6 

T   C 

I  OO  3 

4184 

1864 

8* 

"?6o 

I  QO4 

I  O  7O 

662 

AO 

2OO 

Total  (i  i^  years) 

18,345 

9222 

591 

•2280 

123 

452 


APPENDIX 


III.     CAUSES  OF   EMIGRATION  AND  DISPOSITION  OF  PROPERTY 


YEAR 

PROPERTY 

CAUSE  OF  EMIGRATION 

Sold 

Not 
sold 

Hope  to 
earn  more 

En- 
cum 
bered 
prop 
erty 

Fear 
of 
army 
service 

Other 

1893  (last  nalO  
1804.  . 

10 

ii 
19 

12 

5 
i5 

10 
12 

19 
22 
10 

88 

4i 
279 

563 
282 

43i 
920 
582 

457 
1181 
698 
477 

374 
143 
891 
1978 

713 
1292 
2766 
2466 
1920 

45*3 
6067 

2443 

12 

II 
86 

23 
24 

58 
51 
50 
32 
63 
52 
23 

I 

0 
2 
I 
0 
0 
2 
2 

6 

9 
i 

3 

31 
56 
350 
896 
38i 
341 
512 

339 

237 
534 
392 
414 

4483 

i8o<;    . 

1806 

1807 

1898 

1800 

IQOO  

IQOI  .   . 

IQO2  .   . 

IQO^.   . 

1904  

Total  (ni  years)  

145 

5999 

25,566 

485 

27 

XIII 
EMIGRATION  FROM  CROATIA-SLAVONIA 

I.     EMIGRATION  TO  NORTH  AMERICA  FROM  CROATIA-SLAVONIA, 
BY  COUNTIES  AND  MUNICIPALITIES 


COUNTY 

1899 

1900 

1901 

1902 

1903 

1907* 

Lika-Krbava  
Modrus-Fiume  .... 
Asrarn. 

46 
1300 

I4.C  7 

37 
1742 
1  108 

153 
2563 
28^0 

102 
3804 

4-O4O 

407 

3787 
^167 

2439 
3039 
s6i6 

Varasdin. 

-j 

i 

78 

1  1  cr 

IOO 

76c8 

Bjelovar  Krizevci  . 
Pozegfa  . 

78 

77 

207 

cc 

767 
IOO 

1051 
342 

*333 
574 

3389 

ICCI 

Virovitica  
Svrmium  

I 

5 

2 
85 

6 
196 

I7 
35o 

123 
290 

2424 
2285 

Municipality 

A  pram. 

I  I 

•7 

4 

7 

121 

Varasdin  

I 

17 

27 

Osiek  

T. 

14? 

Zemun  

8 

136 

Total  for   Croatia- 
Slavonia 

2923 

3248 

6717 

9833 

11907 

22,828 

*The  figures  for  1907  are  from  the  Hungarian  statistical  year  book,  1907,  page  65. 


APPENDIX 


453 


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APPENDIX 


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APPENDIX 


XIV 

BOHEMIAN  AND  POLISH  LITERATURE  OF 
AMERICAN  SETTLEMENT 

(l)    BOHEMIAN 

The  Bohemian  Literary  Society,  I  believe,  subsidized  an 
attempt  of  a  Mr.  Habernicht  to  write  the  history  of  Bohe 
mians  in  America,  and  two  or  three  parts,  one  on  Texas,  which 
I  have  used,  one  on  Missouri,  which  I  have  never  been  able  to 
secure,  were  published  in  Bohemian  in  St.  Louis,  but  the  under 
taking  appears  to  have  fallen  through. 

Mr.  Thomas  Capek's  "Pamatky  Ceskych  Emigrantu  v 
Americe"  (revised  edition,  Omaha,  1907),  is  mainly  antiquarian. 

Much  material  is  in  fugitive  form, — pamphlets,  articles,  al 
manacs,  memorial  and  occasional  publications,  and  so  forth. 
Of  these  I  may  mention  the  following. 

"Ceska  Osadaa  jeji  Spolkovy  Zivot  v  Cleveland,  Ohio, "is  an 
illustrated  history  of  Bohemians  in  Cleveland  prepared  for  the 
Prague  Ethnographical  Exposition  of  1895  and  published  by 
the  Volnost  press  in  Cleveland.  Pp.  192. 

"  Pamdtm'k  Ceskych  Evanjelicktfch  Cirkvi  Spojen^ch  Stdtech" ; 
this  is  a  memorial  of  Bohemian  Protestant  churches  in  the  United 
States,  including  an  account  of  all  Bohemian  congregations  of 
the  following  denominations,  Presbyterian,  Independent,  Re 
formed,  Congregational.  Methodist  and  Baptist,  existing  in  the 
year  1900;  edited  by  V.  Siller,  V.  Prucha  and  R.  M.  De  Castello, 
printed  by  the  Krestansky  Posel  in  Chicago,  and  liberally  illus 
trated  with  cuts  of  churches,  ministers  and  so  on.  Pp.  290. 

"Kratke  Dejiny  a  Seznam  Cesko-Katolickych  Osad  ve  Spoj. 
Statech  Americkych"  is  a  brief  history  and  register  of  Bohemian 
Catholic  colonies  in  the  United  States,  in  honor  of  the  twenty- 
fifth  jubilee  of  the  Very  Rev.  Joseph  Hessoun,  by  Rev.  P.  A.  P. 
Houst.  St.  Louis,  1890.  Pp.  viii,  552.  Illustrated. 

"Pamatnik  5oti  Leteho  Jubilea  C.  S.  P.  S.;  1854-1894"; 
a  memorial  of  the  fiftieth  jubilee  of  the  Chekho-Slavonic  Benevo 
lent  Society.  Illustrated. 

"Dejiny  Cesko-Narodniho  Hrbitova  v  Chicago,  111.,  etc."  A 
history  of  the  Bohemian  National  Cemetery  in  Chicago  from  its 
founding  in  1877  to  its  25th  anniversary  in  1902,  by  Frank 
Zdrubek.  Geringer,  Chicago.  Pp.  143. 

"Ceske  Chicago,  Adresar  Ceskych  Obchodniku,  Zivnostniku  a 
Spolku."  Bohemian  Chicago,  a  directory  of  Bohemian  trades- 


APPENDIX  457 

men,  business  men  and  associations,  including  a  short  history 
of  Bohemian  Chicago;  published  by  the  Narodna  Tiskarna 
(National  Press,)  Chicago,  1900.  Pp.  252. 

"Katolik  Cesko-Americky"  Kalendar,"  published  by  the  Bo 
hemian  Benedictine  press,  616  Allport  St.,  Chicago. 

"  Almanach  Cesko-Slovanskeho  Lidu  v  New  Yorku  a  Okoli." 
(Almanac  of  the  Bohemian-Slavonic  people  in  New  York  and  en 
virons.)  Published  yearly  by  the  Ceska  Tiskarna,  312  W.  yist 
St.,  New  York  City. 

"The  Catholic  Bohemians  of  the  United  States,"  Rev.  Valen 
tine  Kohlbeck  in  the  Chawiplain  Educator,  xxv,  pages  36-54; 
(Jan. -Mar.  1906). 

Scattered  material  may  also  be  found  in  the  Bohemian  Voice, 
a  short-lived  paper  published  in  English  for  a  short  time  with 
the  hope  of  informing  Americans  about  their  Bohemian  neigh 
bors. 

(2)    POLISH 

Father  X.  W.  Kruszka,  of  Ripon,  Wisconsin,  has  written  a 
"  Historya  Polska  w  Ameryce  "  ("History  of  Poles  in  America"), 
in  eight  small  volumes,  published  in  Milwaukee,  the  first  in  1905, 
the  eighth  in  1906,  and  illustrated  with  cuts,  chiefly  of  buildings 
and  of  Polish  priests  and  leaders. 

In  the  Lemberg  Magazine  Lud,  xi,  pages  248-269  (Oct.  1905) 
appeared  an  article  "Ludnosc  Polska  w  Stanach  Zjednoczonych 
Ameryki  Polnocnej  "  by  Dr.  Michal  Janik,  based  on  two  trips  to 
America  and  containing  references  to  several  Polish  accounts  of 
Poles  in  America.  I  have  an  English  manuscript  translation  of 
this  article. 

"Polskie  Kolonie  w  Stanach  Zjedn.  poln.  Ameryki  e  ich 
Krotkie  Dzieje"  ("Polish  Colonies  in  the  United  States  and  a 
Short  History  of  Them"),  appeared  in  the  Catholic  Polish  Calen 
dar  for  1895,  published  at  141  and  143  W.  Division  St.,  Chicago. 

Charles  Kraitser's  "The  Poles  in  the  United  States  of  Amer 
ica,  Preceded  by  the  Earliest  History  of  the  Slavonians  and  by 
the  History  of  Poland"  (Philadelphia,  1837,  pp.  196)  is  a  disap 
pointing  little  volume.  The  discussion  of  Poles  in  the  United 
States  takes  up  only  the  last  four  pages,  and  consists  of  the  text 
of  a  Polish  memorial  to  Congress  asking  for  a  grant  of  land,  of 
the  act  granting  the  land,  and  of  complaints  of  the  way  in  which 
the  Polish  exiles  had  been  treated  by  Gallatin  and  others. 


APPENDIX 


XV 

CENSUS  DATA  TO  1880  WITH  A  CRITICAL  CON 
SIDERATION  OF  THE  USE  OF  THE  CENSUS 
FOR  THE  PURPOSES  OF  THIS  STUDY 

For  statistical  data  for  the  period,  1850-1880,  we  have  nothing 
better  than  the  census  figures  presented  graphically  in  Chart  I. 
Unfortunately  the  use  of  the  census  figures  as  a  source  of  in 
formation  as  to  Slavic  population  in  the  United  States  is  subject 
to  grave  drawbacks.  For  the  census  does  not  deal  with  the 
question  of  nationality,  but  of  nativity  only,  and  its  list  of 
countries  of  birth  is  both  incomplete  and  changing. 

In  1850,  of  the  countries  with  which  we  are  concerned,  Aus 
tria  and  Russia  alone  were  given.  In  1860  Poland  was  added, 
though  Poland  was  and  is  divided  among  the  three  neighboring 
countries,  Germany,  Russia  and  Austria,  and  is  therefore  without 
claim  to  be  considered  at  present  as  an  independent  country. 

In  1870  Bohemia  and  Hungary  were  added  to  the  census 
list,  leaving  Austria  to  mean  Austria  apart  from  Hungary  and 
minus  two  of  its  seventeen  Lander,  viz.  Galicia  (or  Austrian 
Poland)  and  Bohemia.  These  changes  not  only  make  compari 
sons  impossible,  but  cause  unavoidable  pitfalls  in  getting  the 
facts.  Many  natives  of  Bohemia  would  doubtless  say,  quite 
correctly,  that  they  were  born  in  Austria ;  many  natives  of  Poland 
that  they  were  born  in  Russia,  Germany  or  Austria  as  the  case 
might  be ;  while  others  would  reply,  as  the  census  plan  intended 
that  they  should,  more  specifically.  Natives  of  Moravia, 
Bohemia's  sister  province,  all  appear  as  Austrians,  though  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  they  make  one  group  with  the  Bohemians, 
a  group  perhaps  as  homogeneous  in  blood,  speech,  feeling  and 
tradition  as  the  Poles.  In  Texas,  for  instance,  where  the  "Bo 
hemians"  are  mostly  from  Moravia,  the  importance  of  the  group 
is  hidden  entirely  by  the  registration  of  all  Moravians  as  natives 
of  Austria  in  one  group  with  Austrian  Germans,  Jews,  Slovenians, 
Tyrolese  Italians,  and  so  on. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  easy  to  speak  as  if  "natives  of  Hun 
gary"  were  synonymous  with  Hungarians,  "natives  of  Poland" 
with  Poles,  and  so  on.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this  is  of  course  far 
from  being  the  case.  In  1905,  for  instance,  the  immigration 
figures  show  Hungarians  (Magyars)  making  only  a  little  over  a 
quarter  of  the  immigrants  from  Hungary,  while  Russians  are 
under  two  per  cent  of  the  immigrants  from  the  Russian  empire 
and  Finland.  The  Jews  especially  are  a  complicating  factor, 


APPENDIX  459 

presenting  as  they  do  characteristics  and  problems  in  sharp  con 
trast  with  those  of  other  immigrants,  but  remaining  indistin 
guishable,  so  far  as  the  census  data  go,  from  other  persons 
born  in  the  same  country.  This  difficulty  especially  affects  the 
Polish  data.  In  1905  there  entered  at  our  ports  92,388  Jews  from 
Russia  and  11,114  Jews  from  Austria ;  those  who  came  from 
the  Polish  provinces  of  Russia  and  Austria  (that  is,  doubtless 
the  greater  part  of  them),  appear  in  the  census  simply  as 
"natives  of  Poland"  and  quite  distort  the  facts.  Especially 
as  regards  concentration  in  cities  the  Polish  Jews  make  the 
census  figures  for  "natives  of  Poland"  almost  meaningless  as 
regards  Poles. 


XVI 

FATHER  KRUSZKA'S  LIST  OF  THE  FOUNDING 
OF  POLISH  PARISHES  PREVIOUS  TO  1880 

The  first  time  a  state  appears  in  the  list  it  is  in  italics. 

YEAR  OF 
FOUNDING 

1855.  Panna  Marya  (Texas}. 

1856.  Bandera,  San  Antonio,  St.  Jadwiga,  Meyersville,  York- 

town  (Texas). 

1857.  Parisville  (Michigan}. 

1858.  Polonia  (Wisconsin}. 

1863.  First  Milwaukee  (Wisconsin). 

1864.  Pine  Creek  (Wisconsin). 

1866.     Washington,    Krakow,    Clover   Bottom,    Union    (Mis 
souri}  . 

1868.  Northeim  (Wisconsin). 

1869.  First  Chicago  (Illinois}. 

1870.  Bluff,  New  Waverly  (Texas);   Manitowoc  (Wisconsin); 

Shamokin  (Pennsylvania}. 

1871.  Plantersville,  Cottage  Hall  (Texas);    Bay  City  (Mich 

igan)  ;  Second  Milwaukee,  Hull  (Wisconsin) ;  Otis 
(Indiana}. 

1872.  Marlin,    Flatonia    (Texas);     first   Detroit    (Michigan); 

Cincinnati  (Ohio}. 

1873.  Bremond,    Huntsville    (Texas);     first    Grand    Rapids 

(Michigan) ;  first  Berlin  (Wisconsin) ;  second  and 
third  Chicago  (Illinois) ;  Shenandoah  (Pennsyl 
vania)  ;  New  York,  first  Buffalo,  Dunkirk  (New 
York} ;  Berea  (Ohio) ;  Winona,  Delano,  Fari- 
bault  (Minnesota}. 


460 


APPENDIX 


YEAR  OF 
FOUNDING 

1874.  La  Salle  (Illinois). 

1875.  Brenham     (Texas);      Manistee     (Michigan);      Beaver 

Dam,  Princeton,  Independence,  North  Creek 
(Wisconsin);  St.  Joseph  (Missouri);  Radom  (Illi 
nois);  Nanticoke,  Excelsior,  Blossburg,  Pitts- 
burg  (Pennsylvania);  Jeffersonville,  Lanesville 
(Indiana);  Brooklyn  (New  York);  first  Toledo, 
first  Cleveland  (Ohio). 

1876.  Czestochowa,  Anderson  (Texas);    Poznan  (Michigan); 

Stevens  Point,  Poniatowski  (Wisconsin);  Brim- 
field  (Illinois);  first  South  Bend  (Indiana);  second 
Toledo  (Ohio);  N.  Poznan  (Nebraska). 

1877.  First  Mt.  Carmel  (Pennsylvania). 

1878.  Krok  (Wisconsin) ;  first  St.  Louis  (Missouri). 

Kruszka,    X.   W.    "Historya    Polska  w  Ameryce,"    Milwaukee, 
1905;    IT,  pages  6,  7. 


XVII 

SLAVIC    IMMIGRATION    BY    NATIONALITIES 
SINCE  1899 


These  figures  are  based  on  those  in  the  Annual  Reports  of 
the  Commissioner  General  of  Immigration  and  in  the  Monthly 
Immigration  Bulletins. 

I.     TOTAL  SLAVIC   IMMIGRATION   TO  THE   UNITED   STATES   FOR 
THE  DECADE  1899-1908 

A.   By  Countries  of  Last  Previous  Residence 


COUNTRY 

NUMBERS 

PER  CENT  OF 
TOTAL  SLAVIC  IM 
MIGRATION  FOR 
THE  PERIOD 

Austria-Hungary 

I  162  124 

60  o 

Russian  Empire  

424,966 

2  S.O 

German  Empire  

3  3,427 

2.O 

Bulgaria,  Servia  and  Montenegro  .  . 
Turkey  in  Europe   .  .           

32,396 
in  78? 

2.0 
I    O 

Other  

14   ^O  I 

I    O 

Total  

1,687,100 

IOO  O 

APPENDIX 
B.  By  Nationality 


461 


NATIONALITY 

NUMBERS 

PER  CENT 

OF  TOTAL 

SLAVIC  IM 
MIGRATION 

FOR   THE 

PERIOD 

Polish                                           .  .     . 

74.3  i  <;  i 

44  O 

Slovak 

•73  2    <(  2  ^ 

I  O  O 

Croatian  and  Slovenian  
Ruthenian 

275,800 

IO  1  660 

16.0 
6  o 

Bohemian  and  Moravian 

84.  877 

50 

Bulgarian,   Servian  and  Monte  - 
ne°rin  

76,047 

4   <? 

Russian  

56,242 

•3    O 

Dalmatian,  Bosnian  and  Herze- 
crovinian           

24  807 

I   O 

Total 

i  68  7  i  oo 

II.     IMMIGRATION  TO  THE  UNITED  STATES  FROM  THE  FIVE  MAIN 

SOURCES  OF  SLAVIC  EMIGRANTS  DURING  THE  DECADE 

1899-1908 


COUNTRY 

TOTAL 
IMMIGRATION 

FROM 

SPECIFIED 
COUNTRY 

SLAVIC 
IMMIGRATION 

FROM 

SPECIFIED 
COUNTRY 

SLAVIC  PER 
CENTAGE  OF 

TOTAL 

IMMIGRATION 

FROM 

SPECIFIED 
COUNTRY 

Austria-  Hungary 

1,893,676 

33.649 
320,658 
1,441,823 
52.92I 

1,162,124 

32.396 
33.427 
424,966 

19.785 

61.0 
96.0 

10.  0 

33-° 
37-o 

Bulgaria,  Servia  and  Mon 
tenegro  

German  Empire  

Russian  Empire  

Turkey  in  Europe  

Total 

3.742,727 

1,672,698 

462 


APPENDIX 


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APPENDIX 


463 


XVIII 

SLAVIC    ALIENS,  ADMITTED    AND    DEPARTED, 
1908-1909 


RACES 

JULY,  1908,  TO  MAY,  1909,  INCLUSIVE 

Admitted 

Departed 

Increase  (+) 
or  decrease  (  —  ) 

Bohemian 
Bulgarian, 
Croatian  a 
Dalmatian 
vinian 

and  Moravian 

6,738 
6,934 
22,284 
1,889 

74,524 
9,522 
16,237 
26,560 

I  ,102 

3,352 

I  I,I2O 
715 

25,204 
6,099 

1.959 

10,224 

+  5,636 
+  3,582 
+  11,164 
+  1,174 

+  49,320 

+  3,423 
+  14,278 
+  16,336 

Servian,  Montenegrin 
nd  Slovenian  
,  Bosnian,  Herzego- 

Polish 

Russian 

Ruthenian 
Slovak 

For  these  figures  see  Monthly  Immigration  Bulletins. 


XIX 

IMMIGRANT   ARRIVALS    WHO    HAVE    BEEN  IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES  BEFORE 

These  figures,  drawn  from  Table  III  of  the  Annual  Report  of 
the  Commission  General  of  Immigration,  cover  the  fifteen  immi 
grant  groups  which  were  the  largest  in  1906  and  also  the  four 
additional  Slavic  groups  which  do  not  come  within  this  list, 
Slavic  groups  are  in  italics ;  the  rank  of  groups  as  regards  total 
numbers  in  1906  is  indicated  by  numbers  in  parentheses.  The 
same  figures  for  1900  are  given  in  a  second  column. 


464 


APPENDIX 


PERCENTAGE  OF   IMMIGRANT  ALIEN  ARRI 
VALS  WHO  HAVE  BEEN  IN  THE  UNITED 
STATES  BEFORE 


NATIONALITY 


(  7)  English 

(10)  Irish 

(13)  Scotch 

11 i)  Slovaks 

(5)   Scandinavians 

(  6)    North  Italians    

(  4)   Germans 

(   i)   South  Italians 

(  8)  Croatians  and  Slovenians 

(   9)   Magyars 

(14)  Ruthenians 

(  3)  Poles 

(12)  Greeks 

Dalmatians,  Bosnians  and  Herzegovinians 

Russians 

Bulgarians,  Servians  and  Montenegrins. . 
Bohemians  and  Moravians 

(15)  Lithuanians 

(   2)   Hebrews 


All  immigrants. 


1906 


27-3 
21.4 
20.3 

18.5 

10.7 

14.4 

13.2 

13.0 

12.6 

9.8 

9-7 

5-9 

5-6 

4-7 

4-5 

3-5 

3-4 

2.8 


17.4 


1900 


30.6 
16.9 

35-6 
16.0 
18.9 
16.3 

12.2 

I  1.2 

9.8 

12. I 

8-5 
4-9 
8.9 
9.0 
2.6 
7-8 
5-4 
i-3 
1.9 

n. 6 


XX 


WAGES  OF  UNSKILLED  LABORERS 

Data  as  to  the  wages  of  Slavic  laborers  are  given  in  Mr.  F.  J. 
Sheridan's  article  "Italian,  Slavic  and  Hungarian  Unskilled 
Immigrants  in  the  United  States,"  U.  S.  Bulletin  of  Labor, 
No.  72,  Sept.,  1907,  pp.  427  and  428. 

The  following  table,  showing  as  it  does  higher  rates  for  Slavs 
and  Hungarians  than  for  Italians,  is  of  interest. 


APPENDIX 


465        + 


NUMBER  AND  PER  CENT  OF  ITALIAN,  SLAVIC  AND  HUNGARIAN, 
UNSKILLED  LABORERS  SENT  OUT  BY  NEW  YORK  EMPLOYMENT 
AGENCIES,  RECEIVING  SPECIFIED  RATES  OF  WAGES  PER 
HOUR 

I  a.    Slavs  and  Hungarians — Northern  States. 


WAGE  GROUP 

LABORERS  RECEIVING 
EACH  RATE  OF 
WAGES 

AVERAGE 
RATE  OF 
WAGES 
PER  DAY 

OF  10 

HOURS 
FOR  EACH 
GROUP 

TOTAL  LABORERS  IN 
EACH  GROUP 

Number 

Rate  Per 
Hour 

Number 

Per  cent 

Under  $0.130  per  hour  .  . 
$0.130    or   under   $0.150 
per  hour  

62 

f                     22 
02 

Si 
I              26 
721 

f                    10 

27 
15 

9 
ii 
199 

27 

10 

18 

$0.1250 
.1300 
•1350 
.1400 
.1450 
.1500 
•1550 
.1600 
.1650 
.1667 
.1700 
•1750 
.1800 
.1900 
.2000 

.... 

1  „ 

1.50 
1.63 

1.78 

62 
191 

721 
72 

254 

4-77" 
14.69 

S5-46. 
5-54 

19-54 

i.  74-<>a 

$0.150  per  hour  
$0.155    or   under   $0.175 

$0.175  or  over  Per  hour.  .  . 

Total 

1,300 

•  1531 

1-53 

1,300 

IOO.OO 

1 6.     Italians — Northern  States. 


Under  $0.130  per  hour  .  . 

$0.130    or   under  $0.150 
per  hour  

800 
f         i,346 
1,056 

$0.1200 
.1250 
.1300 
.1350 

$1-25 

805 

5-93' 

$o  150  per  hour 

I          1,309 
I             345 
7,675 

.1400 
.1450 
.I5OO 

1.30 
1.50 

7,675 

29.87     92.33 
56.53 

$0.155   or    under  $0.175 
per  hour 

72 
329 

•1550 
.I600 

$0.175  or  over  per  hour.. 

143 
8? 
4 
327 
Si 
14 
8 

2 

•  1650 
.I660 
.1700 
.1750 
.I780 
.1850 
.1875 
•1945 

1.61 
1.76 

639 

402 

4.71 
2.96 

Total  

13,577 

.1455 

1.46 

13,577 

IOO.OO 

466 


APPENDIX 


1 1  a.    Slavs  and  Hungarians — Southern  States. 


16 

$0.1042 

"I 

Under  $0.130  per  hour.  . 

84 

•  1137 

I             $1.21 

349 

19.40 

234 

15 

•1273 

J 

* 

285 

.1300 

} 

$0.130   or    under   $0.150 

74 

•1350 

I 

per  hour.  . 

(•              I  34 

582 

82    ^8 

36 

•1375 

1                  M 

I              68 

.1400 

J 

$o.  1  50  per  hour  

551 

.1500 

1.50 

551 

30  63 

$0.155   or  under    $0.175 
per  hour  

262 

.1600 

1.60 

262 

14.56 

$0.175  or  over  per  hour  .  . 

J              5I 
I                  4 

•  1750 
.2000 

1            1-79 

55 

3-o6 

Total  

Italians — Southern  States. 


68 

$0.1136 

i 

14 

.1166 

1 

Under  $0.130  per  hour  .  .  | 

14 

.1200 

\             $1-22 

286 

10.40 

164 

.1250 

26 

.1272 

J 

145 

•1363 

) 

96.19 

$0.130   or   under   $0.150 

124 

•1375 

[            1-37 

305 

11.09 

per  hour 

36 

) 

$0.150  per  hour  

2,055 

.1500 

1.50 

2,055 

74.70 

$0.155    or   under   $0.175 

per  hour  

45 

.1600 

1.60 

45 

1.63 

$0.175  or  over  per  hour  . 

60 

•1750 

i-75 

60 

2.18 

Total 

i  46 

"It  should  be  stated  that  the  rates  quoted  cover  1905  and 
part  of  1906,  and  therefore  the  advances  in  wage  rates  for 
laborers,  especially  in  the  North,  on  account  of  the  demand  that 
has  taken  place  generally  since  that  time,  are  not  included  in 
this  presentation.  In  many  cases  there  have  been  advances  of 
10  per  cent  or  more."  It  is  of  interest  to  compare  these  wages 
with  those  quoted  on  page  56. 


APPENDIX 


XXI 

NATIONALITY    OF    MEN    EMPLOYED    BY    AN 
THRACITE  AND  BITUMINOUS  COAL 
COMPANIES 

The  following  data  are  from  page  413  of  Mr.  Sheridan's  article 
quoted  in  Appendix  XX. 

ANTHRACITE  COAL  EMPLOYES 
"The  nationality  of  the  anthracite  mine  workers  was  secured 

in  detail  for  the  year  1905  by  the  bureau  of  industrial  statistics 

of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania. 

"In  a  total  of  92,485  men  employed  by  1 16  companies  out  of  a 

total  of  140  the  numbers  were  as  follows: 

NUMBER  AND  PER  CENT  OF  EACH   NATIONALITY  WORKING  FOR 
116  ANTHRACITE   COMPANIES   OF   PENNSYLVANIA   IN    1905 

[Compiled  from  the  Report  of  the  Secretary  of  Internal  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania  for  1905: 
Part  III,  Industrial  Statistics,  pages  458  and  459] 


NATIONALITY 

NUMBER 

PER 
CENT 
OF  TOTAL 

NATIONALITY 

NUMBER 

PER 

CENT 
OF  TOTAL 

Slavic  and  Hungarian 
Italian 

36,049 
3,975 

25,905 
6,35i 
2,397 

39-o: 
4-3 

28.0 
6.8' 

2.6 

English 

2,497 
289 
4,033 
10,989 

2.7 
•3 
4-4 
Il.p 

Scotch 

American,  mostly    of 
Slavic    and    other 
foreign  parentage.. 
Irish 

German       .            ... 

Other  nationalities.  .  . 

Total 

92,485 

100.0 

Welsh  

BITUMINOUS  COAL  EMPLOYES 

"  In  the  bituminous  coal-mining  region  of  Pennsylvania  398 
companies  employing  55,583  men  reported  nationality  in  full 
detail  as  follows: 

NUMBER   AND    PER    CENT    OF    EACH    NATIONALITY    WORKING 
FOR  398  BITUMINOUS  COMPANIES  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  IN  1905 

[Compiled  from  the  Report  of  the  Secretary  of  Internal  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania  for  1905: 
Part  III,  Industrial  Statistics,  page  475] 


NATIONALITY 

NUMBER 

PER 

CENT     1 
OF  TOTAL 

NATIONALITY 

NUMBER 

PER 

CENT 
OF  TOTAL 

Slavic  and  Hungarian 

21  708 

Scotch 

i  189 

Italian 

6  824 

Welsh 

5 

American,   mostly   of 
Slavic     and     other 
foreign  parentage.. 

17,347 

German  

Eleven  other  nation 
alities  

1,721 

3-1 

Irish 

Total 

cr  t-g-j 

468  APPENDIX 

"It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  Slavic,  Hungarian,  and  Italian 
races  are 'numerically  predominant  in  both  the  anthracite  and 
bituminous  coal  fields  of  Pennsylvania. 

"The  Slavic  races  are  also  numerically  strong  in  the  iron  and 
steel  industries  of  Pennsylvania,  while  in  the  cotton,  woolen, 
and  textile  industries  their  representation  is  small." 


XXII 
STATISTICS  OF  SLAVS  IN  AGRICULTURE 

Map  XI  shows  the  distribution  of  Slavic  farmers  and  farm 
laborers  so  far  as  this  can  be  learned  from  the  census  data. 
By  "Slavic  is  here  meant  those  whose  parents  were  born  in 
Austria,  Bohemia,  Hungary,  Poland  or  Russia.  These  figures, 
while  the  best  that  are  available,  are  a  very  imperfect  source  of 
information  as  to  Slavic  occupations,  excluding  Slavs  of  parent 
nativity  other  than  those  specified  (for  instance,  Bulgarians), 
and  including  all  others  of  the  specified  parent  nativities,  not 
only  Slavs  but  non- Slavs,  as  for  instance  Polish  and  Russian 
Jews  (to  the  small  degree  to  which  they  are  on  farms),  and 
Hungarians,  Germans  and  other  non-Slavic  elements  from  the 
countries  specified.  Also  the  figures  give  no  idea  of  the  numbers 
of  the  families  of  farmers  and  farm  laborers. 

The  difficulty  with  the  mode  of  presentation  followed  on 
Map  XI  is  that  it  exaggerates  to  the  eye  the  numbers  in  large 
states  like  Texas,  and  underrates  them  in  small  states  like  Con 
necticut,  but  a  presentation  not  of  absolute  numbers  but  in 
terms  of  density  (proportion  to  area)  or  of  percentage  of  popu 
lation  has  its  own  drawbacks. 

It  may  be  of  interest,  however,  to  have  the  facts  as  to  the 
per  cent  of  the  whole  class  of  farmers  and  farm  laborers  whose 
parents  were  born  in  Austria,  Bohemia,  Hungary,  Poland  or 
Russia  (i.  e.,  persons  having  both  parents  born  as  specified  or 
one  parent  born  as  specified  and  one  native).  The  figures  refer 
to  males  over  ten,  and  are  based  on  Table  41  of  the  volume  on 
Occupations,  Census  of  1900.  States  with  less  than  two  hundred 
of  the  Slavic  group  are  omitted. 


APPENDIX 


469 


I.    PERCENTAGE   OF   TOTAL   FARMERS    IN    EACH  STATE  WHOSE 
PARENTS  WERE  BORN  IN  SPECIFIED  COUNTRIES 


South  Dakota 1 1.06 

North  Dakota 10.08 

Nebraska 6.42 

Wisconsin 5.25 

Connecticut 4-90 

Minnesota 4.65 

Kansas 3.12 

Massachusetts 3.03 

New  Jersey 2.51 

Oklahoma 2.48 

Washington 1.97 

Texas 1.93 

Iowa 1.65 

United  States 1.12 

Including  females.  1.07 


Colorado 1.57 

Michigan 1.25 

Oregon 1.20 


New  York 

California 

Illinois 

Maryland 

Pennsylvania 

Missouri 

Indiana 

Ohio 

Arkansas.  . 


i. 06 
.61 
.48 
•39 
•37 
.28 
.27 
.24 
.16 
Virginia 08 


The  following  table  gives  the  totals  for  the  United  States  for 
each  country  of  birth  and  each  kind  of  agricultural  pursuit  separ 
ately. 

II.  MALES  TEN  YEARS  OF  AGE  AND  OVER  OF  SPECIFIED  PARENT 
NATIVITY  GAINFULLY  EMPLOYED  AS  SPECIFIED 


AUSTRIA 

BOHEMIA 

HUNGARY 

POLAND 

RUSSIA 

TOGETHER 

Agricultural 
laborers  .... 
Farmers,  plant 
ers  and  over 
seers  

6,134 
0,086 

13.356 

2  2  O^8 

1,494 

1,^02 

12,514 
1  1  872 

9.539 

I  "?    3QO 

43.037 
58  908 

All     others     in 
agricultural 
pursuits  .... 

884 

443 

231 

1,100 

832 

3.490 

Total    in    agri 
cultural  pur 
suits 

1  6  104 

36  8^7 

•2   227 

2  s  d.86 

2  ?    761 

^O»  /UJ 

1U0>4OJ 

Cf.  Table  Ixxvi.     Census  of  1900.     Volume  on  Occupations. 


It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  every  case  except  that  of 
Poland,  farmers  are  more  numerous  than  farm  laborers. 

It  is  also  interesting  to  compare  different  nationalities  as  re 
gards  the  proportions  occupied  in  agriculture,  as  shown  in  the 
next  table. 


47°  APPENDIX 

III.     NUMBER    OCCUPIED    IN    AGRICULTURE    PER    THOUSAND 

MALES  OF  SPECIFIED  PARENTAGE  ENGAGED  IN  GAINFUL 

OCCUPATIONS 

(Slavic  Groups  are  in  Italics) 

"Birthplace  of  parents: 

Hungary 35 

Italy 62 

Austria 96 

Russia 1 1 6* 

Poland 122* 

Ireland 155 

Canada  (French) 1 68 

Scotland 212 

England  and  Wales 225 

France 248 

Canada  (English) 264 

Germany 281 

Sweden 328 

Bohemia 354 

Switzerland 396 

Denmark 444 

Norway 546 

*  For  Poles  and  Russians  these  figures  are  unfortunately 
rendered  almost  meaningless  by  the  presence  of  the  large  Hebrew 
group  from  Poland  and  Russia. 


APPENDIX 


471 


XXIII 
MONEY  ORDERS  TO  EUROPE 

Besides  the  statements  as  to  remittances  given  in  the  various 
chapters  of  Part  I  the  following  data  are  submitted,  taken  from 
pages  479-480  of  Mr.  Sheridan's  article  quoted  in  Appendix  XX. 


I.  INTERNATIONAL  MONEY  ORDERS  ISSUED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

AND  SENT  TO  ITALY  AND  THE  SLAVIC  COUNTRIES  FOR  EACH 

CALENDAR    YEAR    FROM    1900    TO    1906 

[Figures  relating  to  money  orders  are  from  the  annual  reports  of  the  transactions  of  the 
New  York  post-office.     The  amounts  are  those  sent  from  all  post-offices  in  the  United 

States] 


YEAR  ENDED 
DECEMBER  31  — 

MONEY  ORDERS  SENT  TO  ITALY, 
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY,  AND 
RUSSIA 

MONEY  ORDERS  SENT  TO  OTHER 
COUNTRIES 

Number 

Amount 

Number 

Amount 

1900  
1901  
1902  
1903  
1904  
1905  
1906  

163,691 
263.S99 
395.644 
594,565 
700,611 
966,718 
1,179,805 

$3,845,251-14 
6,251,887.64 
10,464,447.48 

J7.  385,  759-72 
18,997,965.90 
26,014,022.06 
36,798,561.92 

840,416 
901,039 
1,014,904 
1,144,121 
1,204,861 
1,356,859 

*.  577.  652 

$11,857,176.71 
12,742,945.59 

14,599.437-34 
16,882,454.90 
17,722,935.48 
20,167,420.66 
25,636,781.02 

Total  
Av.    am't 
of  each  or 
der.  . 

4,264,633 

$119,757,895.86 
$28.08 

8,039,852 

$i  19,609,151.70 
$14.88 

YEAR  ENDED 
DECEMBER  31  — 

AMOUNT  OF 
MONEY  ORDERS 
SENT  TO  ITALY 

IMMI 
GRANTS 

FROM 

ITALY 

AMOUNT  OF 
MONEY  ORDERS 
SENT  TO  AUS 
TRIA-HUNGARY 
AND  RUSSIA 

IMMIGRANTS 

FROM 

AUSTRIA- 
HUNGARY 

AND  RUSSL4 

IQOO 

$  i  362  1  66  42 

a  4.84,207 

$2,483  084  72 

a    I,4OI    689 

IQOI  . 

I    QO  ^    6l  I    7  ^ 

i  T.Z  006 

4,  346,27  S  80 

108  647 

IOO2.  . 

3607  70  ^  6  1 

178,  37  ^ 

6,8^6,6=;i  87 

270,  336 

1903  

1004.  . 

7,729,257.86 
8  780  255  81 

230,622 
IQ  3.2Q6 

9,656,501.86 
10,217,710  09 

342,104 
322,207 

IQO1^  .  . 

1  1  092  446  60 

22  1,470 

14,021x7  5;  46 

460    ^QO 

I9O6.  . 

162  30    I  34  4O 

27  3.I2O 

2O,  <  =CO,  427.  ^2 

480  803 

Total  .... 

$50,716,668.45 

*,  7I7.095 

$69,041,227.41 

3,485,466 

a  Total  number  living  in   the   United   States,    exclusive   of 
Alaska  and  Hawaii,  as  reported  by  the  census. 


472 


APPENDIX 


II.  AMOUNT  OF  MONEY  ORDERS  SENT  TO  ITALY  AND  TO  AUSTRIA- 
HUNGARY  AND  RUSSIA  PER  IMMIGRANT  FOR  THE  ENTIRE 
SEVEN  YEARS,  1900  TO  1906 


COUNTRY 

IMMI 
GRANTS, 
1900  TO 
1906  (a) 

AMOUNT  OF 
MONEY  ORDERS 
SENT 

AMOUNT 
PER 
IMMI 
GRANT 

Italy  

1,71  7,OCK 

$50,716,668.45 

$20.^4 

Austria-  Hungary  and  Russia    .  . 

3,485,466 

69,041,227.41 

19.81 

a  Includes  total  living  in  the  United  States  in  1900,  together 
with  those  arriving  from  1901  to  1906. 

"  This  table  shows  that  for  every  man,  woman,  and  child  born 
in  Italy  and  living  in  or  arriving  in  the  United  States,  $29.54 
was  sent  to  Italy  during  the  seven  years  1900  to  1906,  inclusive, 
or  $4.22  per  year  per  person,  and  for  immigrants  from  Austria- 
Hungary  and  Russia  in  the  same  period  $19.81  was  sent  to  those 
countries,  or  $2.83  per  year  per  person." 


III.    NUMBER  AND  AMOUNT  (TOTAL  AND  AVERAGE)  OF  MONEY 

ORDERS  SENT  TO  ITALY,  HUNGARY,  AUSTRIA,  AND  RUSSIA 

DURING  THE  SEVEN  YEARS  ENDING  DECEMBER  31,  1906 


AVER 

COUNTRY 

NUMBER  OF 
ORDERS 

AMOUNT  OF 
MONEY  ORDERS 

AGE 

AMOUNT 

SENT 

ORDER 

Italy  

I,  314,  T.ZO 

$50,716,668.45 

$38.  SQ 

Hungary  

700,700 

22,917,566.01 

32.2Q 

Austria  

802  06$ 

22,452,492  27 

2^.14 

Russia  

I,  347  618 

2  3,671,160.1  3 

17.  c  7 

IV.    AVERAGE  AMOUNT  OF  EACH  MONEY  ORDER  SENT  TO  PRIN 
CIPAL  COUNTRIES  IN  1906 


AVERAGE 

AVERAGE 

COUNTRY 

AMOUNT  OF 
EACH  ORDER 

COUNTRY 

AMOUNT  OF 
EACH  ORDER 

SENT 

SENT 

Italy  . 

$40.  t;  i 

Germany  

$14.96 

Hungary 

3<    2  I 

Sweden  

20.60 

Austria 

OJ-* 
28   80 

Norway.  .             .    . 

22.80 

Russia  

19.19 

Greece  

42.52 

Great  Britain  

13.28 

APPENDIX  473 

"  The  total  amount  of  money  orders  sent  in  1906  to  all  coun 
tries  was  $62,435,342.94,  and  of  this  the  amount  sent  to  Italy 
and  the  Slavic  countries  was  $36,798,561.92,  or  58.9  per  cent  of 
the  total,  while  the  number  of  orders  sent  was  but  42.8  per  cent 
of  the  whole  number.  During  the  seven  years  there  was  sent 
to  Italy  30.8  per  cent  of  the  number  of  orders  and  42.3  per  cent 
of  the  total  amount  of  money  sent  to  Austria,  Hungary,  Russia, 
and  Italy  combined,  while  the  Italians  constituted  but  33  per 
cent  of  the  total  number  of  immigrants  from  the  four  countries. 

"  It  is  probable  that  the  reason  for  this  is  that  a  greater  number 
of  immigrants  from  the  Slavic  countries  brought  their  families 
to  the  United  States  than  did  the  Italians.  The  remittances 
through  the  post-offices  are  but  a  small  proportion  of  the  total 
amount  transmitted  and  carried  over  in  person.  Large  amounts 
of  which  there  are  no  records  are  sent  over  through  the  Italian 
bankers,  and  also  by  bankers  of  other  nationalities. 

"The  amount  of  money  transmitted  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
business  must  be  allowed  for  and  this  would  reduce  in  so  far 
the  amount  of  the  remittances  really  representing  the  sendings 
of  immigrants." 


XXIV 
POLISH  FARMERS 

Compare  with  the  account  in  the  text  the  following  passage 
from  an  article  in  the  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  August  4, 
1909,  called  "Absorbing  the  Alien;  Hadley  as  a  New  England 
in  Microcosm": 

"The  Polish  people  possess  qualities  of  value  to  any  town. 
They  are  not  transient  squatters,  but  come  with  the  expectation, 
hope  and  purpose  of  making  permanent  homes.  Their  industry 
and  thrift  are  shown  in  their  success  with  farms  given  up  by  the 
natives.  Every  member  of  a  Polish  family  helps  in  the  work  of 
cultivation.  It  is  the  pioneer  stage  with  these  people,  and  women 
and  children  share  in  the  toil  of  the  father. 

"Their  dealings  in  a  business  way  amongst  themselves  and  with 
their  neighbors  are  characterized  by  shrewdness  and  caution. 
They  are  both  thrifty  and  honest.  Obligations  are  paid  promptly. 
A  physician  who  has  a  large  practice  among  these  people  says 


474  APPENDIX 

that  his  fee  is  paid  on  the  spot,  or  if  there  is  no  money  on 
hand,  within  twenty-four  hours.  This  is  in  striking  contrast 
with  the  practice  in  many  American  homes,  where  the  doctor's 
account  is  usually  settled  last.  But  if  the  medical  man's  at 
tendance  does  not,  after  a  few  visits,  result  in  improvement, 
another  physician  is  called  in  or  the  patient  may  be  left  to  die 
or  recover  as  nature  may  decree.  The  same  keen  sense  of  money 
value  is  seen  in  the  experience  of  evening  schools.  Those  in 
charge  find  that  they  must  make  it  clear  that  the  studies  and 
instruction  possess  direct  pecuniary  advantage  and  give  definite 
training  for  wage  earning  or  the  attendance  falls  off  rapidly. 

"  It  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  customs  and  manners  of 
the  Poles  are  crude  and  in  many  ways  repugnant  to  American 
ideas,  but  their  standards  of  morality  are,  on  the  whole,  com 
mendable.  An  evidence  of  this  is  found  in  their  comparatively 
low  death  rate  as  shown  in  the  study  of  various  nationalities 
in  Manhattan  for  the  year  1906.  The  greatest  mortality  is 
from  children's  diseases  and  doubtless  results  from  the  ignorance 
of  parents.  The  stock  is  characterized  by  a  vigor  and  vitality 
that  must  be  conditioned  on  right  living.  The  family  is  regarded 
with  respect  and  reverence. 

"  In  mental  quality  the  Pole  shows  his  ability  to  cope  with  his 
Yankee  neighbor  in  the  market  place.  His  readiness  in  master 
ing  the  art  of  farming  speaks  well  for  his  quickness  of  observa 
tion  and  his  power  to  apply  information  and  adjust  himself  to 
new  conditions.  The  children  are  faithful  in  attendance  on 
school  in  the  grades  and  often  distinguish  themselves  by  their 
fine  standing.  Few  if  any  have,  so  far,  entered  Hopkins  Acad 
emy,  the  secondary  school  of  the  town.  There  is  a  strong  dis 
position  to  put  the  boys  and  girls  to  work  when  the  State's 
requirements  for  schooling  have  been  met,  but  this  policy  is 
based  not  so  much  on  lack  of  interest  in  education,  as  it  is  on  the 
wish  to  add  to  the  income  of  the  family.  As  the  Poles  gain  in 
material  prosperity  there  is  every  reason  to  expect  that  they 
will  seek  larger  educational  advantages  for  their  children  and 
the  record  of  many  of  these  in  the  lower  grades  augurs  well  for 
their  success  in  the  high  school.  " 


APPENDIX 


475 


XXV 


CENSUS  DATA  AS  TO  INTERMARRIAGE 

(Vol.  I,  1900,  pages  cxc,  cxci,  cxcii,  and  Table  56) 
I.     NATIVE  WHITE  PERSONS  OF  FOREIGN  PARENTAGE 


SPECIFIED  COUNTRY 

BOTH  PARENTS  BORN 
AS  SPECIFIED 

ONE  PARENT  BORN  AS 
SPECIFIED  AND  ONE 
PARENT  NATIVE 

Austria  

177,774 

26,281 

Bohemia  

168,449 

•?!,  362 

Hungary  

66,727 

6,031 

Poland  

290,912 

19,006 

Russia  

247,672 

I5»24I 

II.     WHITE  PERSONS  [NATIVE  AND  FOREIGN  BORN]  OF 
FOREIGN  PARENTAGE 


SPECIFIED  COUNTRY 

BOTH  PARENTS 
BORN  AS 
SPECIFIED 

ONE  PARENT 
BORN  AS  SPECI 
FIED  AND  ONE 
PARENT  NATIVE 

Austria  

Per  cent 
0  3-Q 

Per  cent 
6.1 

Bohemia  

QI.2 

8.8 

Hungary  

07.2 

2.8 

Poland  

07-2 

2.8 

Russia  

97.8 

2.2 

III.     WHITE    PERSONS  HAVING  FATHERS    BORN  AS    SPECIFIED 


MOTHERS 

SPECIFIED  COUNTRY 

MOTHERS 
ALSO  BORN 
AS  SPECIFIED 

BORN  IN 
OTHER 
FOREIGN 

MOTHERS 

NATIVE 

TOTAL 

COUNTRIES 

Per  cent 

Per  cent 

Per  cent 

Per  cent 

Austria  

89-3 

6.4 

4-3 

100 

Bohemia  

92.0 

2.1 

5-9 

100 

Hungary  

93-3 

4-5 

2.2 

100 

Poland  

94.9 

2.9 

2.2 

100 

Russia  

04  O 

4.2 

1.8 

IOO 

V  T~ 

476  APPENDIX 

IV.     WHITE    PERSONS  HAVING  MOTHERS    BORN    AS    SPECIFIED 


SPECIFIED  COUNTRY 

FATHERS 
BORN  AS 
SPECIFIED 

FATHERS 
BORN  IN 
OTHER 
FOREIGN 
COUNTRIES 

FATHERS 
NATIVE 

TOTAL 

Austria 

02  <? 

6  o 

I   c 

I  OO 

Bohemia  

o^.T. 

T..6 

•?.  i 

IOO 

Hungary  

OS.  6 

•J    Q 

o  s 

IOO 

Poland  

07.  8 

1.7 

O   "> 

I  OO 

Russia  

07  I 

2    C 

O  4. 

IOO 

V.     PERSONS   OF   MIXED  FOREIGN  PARENTAGE  CLASSIFIED  AC 
CORDING  TO  COMBINATIONS  OF  PARENTAGE 
(Census,  Table  56.) 


FATHER 
BORN  IN 

MOTHER  BORN 

IN 

FATHER 
BORN  IN 

MOTHER  BORN 

IN 

Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  — 
Austria.   ... 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.   .  .  . 
Austria.  
Austria.  .  .  . 
Austria.   .  .  . 
Austria.   .  .  . 
Austria  
Austria  
Austria  
Bohemia  .... 
Bohemia  .... 
Bohemia  
Bohemia  
Bohemia  .... 
Bohemia  .... 
Bohemia  .... 
Bohemia  
Bohemia  
Bohemia  
Bohemia  
Bohemia  
Bohemia 
Bohemia 
Bohemia  \ 
Bohemia  
Bohemia  ] 
Bohemia  .  .  .  .  i 
Hungary. 
Hungary  .  .  .  .  ; 
Hungary  ; 
Hungary  
Hungary  
Hungary  
Hungary  
Hungary  
Hungary  

Bohemia 
Canada  (Eng.) 
Canada  (Fr.) 
Denmark 
England 
France 
Germany 
Hungary 
Ireland 
Italy 
Norway 
Poland 
Russia 
Scotland 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Wales 
Other  countries 
Austria 
Canada  (Eng.) 
Canada  (Fr.) 
Denmark 
England 
France 
Germany 
Hungary 
Ireland 
Italy 
Norway 
Poland 
Russia 
Scotland 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Wales 
Other  countries 
Austria 
Bohemia 
Canada  (Eng.) 
Canada  (Fr.) 
Denmark 
England 
France 
Germany 
Ireland 

i,74i 
269 
62 
34 
880 
503 
14,938 
2,534 
I,°9S 
517 
72 
1,153 
3,140 

122 
I78 

802 

37 
1,023 
1,676 
154 
33 

22 
89 

68 

4,024 
455 
132 
ii 

22 
294 

1  66 

21 

35 

103 

223 
1,219 

728! 

384 
ii 
274 
123 
6,186 
3io 

Hungary  .... 
Hungary  
Hungary  
i  Hungary  
Hungary  
'Hungary  
Hungary  
Hungary 
Hungary 
(Poland  
Poland  
1  Poland 

Italy 
Norway 
Poland 
Russia 
Scotland 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Wales 
Other  countries 
Austria 
Bohemia 
Canada  (Eng.) 
Canada  (Fr.) 
Denmark 
England 
France 
Germany 
Hungary 
Ireland 
Italy 
Norway 
Russia 
Scotland 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Wales 
Other  countries 
Austria 
Bohemia 
Canada  (Eng.) 
Canada  (Fr.) 
Denmark 
England 
France 
Germany 
Hungary 
Ireland 
Italy 
Norway 
Poland 
Scotland 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Wales 
Other  countries 

39 
i? 
427 
346 
23 
46 
114 
17 
116 
1,617 
77i 
190 
56 
18 
1,039 
196 
11,164 
977 
33i 
336 
4i 
2,633 
67 
141 
US 
18 
457 
5,163 
191 
190 

22 
65 
2,279 

395 
13,907 
1,414 
418 
24 

101 

3,506 
87 
512 

211 
14 
1,662 

Poland  
[Poland... 
j  Poland  
Poland  
1  Poland  
jPoland  
Poland  
Poland  
Poland 

IPoland  
JPoland  
'Poland  
i  Poland.  .  . 
i  Poland 

Poland  

Russia 

Russia  
'Russia 

i  Russia  
(Russia 

I  Russia  
Russia  
Russia. 

Russia  

Russia 

Russia  

Russia  
Russia  

Russia 

Russia  

Russia 

Russia  
Russia 

APPENDIX  477 

XXVI 
A  POLISH  CRITICISM  OF  CHURCH  SCHOOLS 

An  article  in  the  Milwaukee  Press  (Prasa),  after  noting  that 
in  a  competition  among  Polish  pupils  in  writing  reportorial  ar 
ticles,  "All  those  whose  work  was  below  the  required  percent 
age  were  born  and  educated  in  this  country, "  while  the  success 
ful  competitors  were  educated  in  Europe,  asks  why  this  was  so : 

"Why,  then,  are  they  such  poor  writers?"  To  its  own  query 
it  then  replies  as  follows. 

"Because  of  the  poor  and  faulty  educational  facilities. 
Being  mostly  orthodox  Catholics,  Polish  parents  are  compelled 
to  send  their  children  to  Polish  parochial  schools.  All  other 
schools,  especially  the  public  schools,  are  denounced  from  the 
pulpit  and  in  the  so-called  'church  press'  as  'unchristian, 
pagan  and  demoralizing  institutions.'  Parents  sending  their 
children  to  any  other  but  the  parochial  school  are  denounced, 
threatened,  ostracized,  even  expelled  from  the  church,  and  their 
children  are  persecuted. 

"With  the  exception  of  those  where  the  priest  himself  is  a 
sincere  educator,  the  parochial  schools  are  poor,  many  of  them 
very  poor,  educational  institutions.  Reading,  writing,  arith 
metic,  geography  and  history  are  taught  in  many  of  them  rather 
superficially.  On  the  other  hand  many  hours  every  day  are 
spent  for  reciting  catechism  and  church  formulas,  which  is 
called  '  teaching  religion, '  but  it  is  far  from  being  really  re 
ligion. 

"  The  result  of  such  poor  system  of  teaching  is  that  the  Polish 
children,  after  spending  six  or  seven  years  in  the  parochial  school, 
can  hardly  pass  an  examination  for  the  fifth  grade  in  the  public 
schools — if  they  want  to  continue  their  education  in  the  public 
school. 

"The  rule  in  most  of  the  parishes  is  that  the  child  shall  not 
leave  the  parochial  school  until  after  first  communion:  and  no 
child  is  accepted  to  first  communion  until  after  being  thirteen 
years  of  age.  It  very  often  happens  that  a  brighter  child  fin 
ishes  all  the  grades  in  the  parochial  school  at  the  end  of  its 
eleventh  or  twelfth  year.  But  it  is  not  allowed  to  leave  the 
parochial  school  until  it  is  over  thirteen  years  of  age.  It  is 
required  to  stay  in  the  parochial  school  and  waste  one  or  two 
years  doing  nothing. 

"  Now  a  child  being  thirteen  years  of  age,  and  graduating  only 
into  the  fifth,  or  even  sixth  grade,  has  three  or  four  more  years 


APPENDIX 

to  study  in  order  to  graduate  from  the  public  school.  Therefore 
the  child  that  attends  a  parochial  school  must  study  in  the 
common  school  until  it  gets  to  be  sixteen  or  seventeen,  some 
times  even  eighteen  years  of  age;  while  the  child  that  attends 
the  public  school  finishes  the  same  studies  when  it  is  about 
fourteen  years  of  age. 

"In  some  parishes,  so-called  'high  schools'  are  established 
for  those  who  have  graduated  from  the  parochial  school.  Not 
much  of  importance  is  taught  in  these  so-called  'high  schools,' 
their  main  object  being  to  keep  the  children  away  from  the 
public  school. 

"You  will,  please,  remember  that  half  of  the  Polish  popula 
tion  here  still  belong  to  the  'workingman's  class,'  and  that 
Polish  families  are  quite  large.  Therefore  very  few  Polish  par 
ents  can  afford  to  send  all  their  children  to  school  after  the 
fourteenth  year. 

"  So  you  can  see  where  the  fault  is:  not  with  the  Polish  people, 
but  with  the  church  authorities,  who  by  such  queer  means 
compel  the  people  to  keep  their  children  in  ignorance. 

"The  Polish  people  realize  this  more  and  more.  They  demand 
better  parochial  schools,  but  their  demands  are  ignored. 

"Driven  to  desperation  by  the  purposely  poor  parochial 
system,  they  do  not  mind  any  more  threats,  ridicule  and  per 
secution  ;  they  see  that  their  first  duty  towards  their  children  is 
good  schooling.  And  were  the  public  school  authorities  not 
so  slow  in  adding  the  Polish  language  to  their  curriculum  in 
the  Polish  districts,  half  of  the  Polish  children  would  be  now  in 
the  public  schools. 

"Of  course,  the  church  authorities  will  deny  that  the  system 
of  teaching  in  the  parochial  schools  is  faulty.  But  you  cannot 
deny  facts  and  results." 

The  view  of  a  Ruthenian  priest  may  be  worth  quoting: 

"Education,  the  school  alone,  can  help.  But  success  can 
be  neither  quick  nor  easy.  My  people  distrust  these  schools, 
teaching  their  children  in  a  language  that  they  cannot  under 
stand  themselves.  Their  whole  history  prepares  them  to  sus 
pect  ulterior  purposes.  Perhaps,  too,  they  have  sometimes 
seen  political  influences  at  work  in  public  schools.  They  have 
most  confidence  in  parochial  schools,  but  as  supplementary  to 
the  public  schools,  not  as  a  substitute." 


APPENDIX  479 


XXVII 

PERCENTAGE    OF    ILLITERACY    AMONG    IMMI 
GRANTS   14  YEARS   OF  AGE   AND   OVER 
FOR  THE  YEAR  ENDED  JUNE  30, 1900 

(Slavic  groups  are  in  Italics} 

(41)  Turkish 78.7 

(40)   Portuguese 60.0 

(39)  Syrian 56.4 

(38)   Italian  (Southern) 54.5 

(37)   Filipinos 50.0 

(36)  Rutkenian  (Russniak} 49.0 

(35)   Pacific  Islanders 41.0 

(34)   Mexican 38.3 

(33)  Croatian  and  Slovenian 37.4 

(32)  Bulgarian,  Servian  and  Montenegrin 35.9 

(31)  Dalmatian,  Bosnian  and  Herzegovinian 32.9 

(30)   Lithuanian 32.1 

(29)  Polish 3*-6 

(28)  Russian 28.8 

(27)  Slovak 28.0 

(26)   Roumanian 25.1 

(25)  Armenian 24.4 

(24)  African  (black) 23-9 

(23)   Spanish  American 22.8 

(22)   Hebrew 22.8 

(21)   Korean 22.5 

(20)   Greek 17.5 

(19)  Magyar 16.9 

(18)   Italian  (Northern) 11.8 

(17)   Dutch  and  Flemish 9.9 

(16)  Japanese 8.9 

(15)   Not  specified 7.9 

(14)  Cuban 6.9 

(13)   German 5.8 

(12)   West  Indian 5.4 

(n)   Spanish 5.0 

(10)  French 4.1 

(  9)   Welsh 3.7 

(  8)   Irish § 3.2 

(   7)  Bohemian  and  Moravian 3.0 

(  6)  Finnish 2.7 

(   5 )   Scotch 2.1 

(  4)   English 2.0 

(   3)   Hawaiian 1.9 

(   2)  Chinese 1.4 

(   i)   Scandinavian 0.8 


Total 24.2 

Industrial  Commission,  Vol.  XV,  pages  282-3. 


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483 


484  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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do  not  for  the  most  part  appear  in  this  Bibliography. 


486  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

See  also  Almanach  Ceskoslovanskeho  Lidu  v  New 
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Servian  Popular  Poetry.     London,  1827. 

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Wybor  Poezyi  Polskiey.  Specimens  of  the  Polish  poets 
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Wybor  z  Basnictiwi  Ceskeho.  Cheskian  Anthology;  being 
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Brandes:  Impressions  of  Poland.     1888. 

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Bulgaria.     See  Dicey. 

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Der  Einfluss  der  Ernten,  respective  der  Getreidepreise  auf 
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1878-98.  Statistische  Monatsschrift,  N.  F.  6;  167- 
216.  1901. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  487 

Die  Ueberseeische  Oesterreichische  Wanderung  in  den  Jahren 

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(Feb.  6,  1909). 


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Cigar  Making.     See  Riis;   Robins. 
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488  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Mittheilungen  (Agram);  Viestnik;  Volkszahlung  vom  31 

Dezember,    1900,   in   den  Konigreichen   Kroatien  und 

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Pa.,  1898. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  489 

Dalmatia.  See  Coffin;  Diehl;  Evans;  Holbach;  Munro; 
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Dances.     See  Czerwinski;  Waldau. 

Daszynska-Golinska,  Dr.  Zofia:  Neuere  Literatur  iiber  Galizi- 
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Deniker,  Joseph:  The  Races  of  Man;  an  outline  of  Anthropol 
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Devine,  Edward  T. :  Immigration  as  a  Relief  Problem.  Charities, 

12:  129—133  (Feb.  6,  1904). 

The     Pittsburgh     Survey.     Charities    and     the    Commons, 
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Dicey,  Edward:   History  of  the  Peasant  State.     London,  1894. 

Diehl,  C.:  En  M6diterranee.  1901.  (Contains  Les  Souvenirs 
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Diplomatic  and  Consular  Reports  (British).  Finances  and  Gen 
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Dixon,  Charlton:  Slovak  Grammar  for  English  Speaking  Stu 
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Donaldson,  Th.:  The  Public  Domain.  Gov.  Printing  Office,  1884. 
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Dowie,  Menie  Muriel:  A  Girl  in  the  Karpathian  Mountains. 
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Drage,  Geoffrey:  Austria-Hungary.  Pp.  xvii,  846.  Dutton,  1909. 

Durham,  Mary  Edith:  The  Burden  of  the  Balkans.    Pp.  xii,  331. 

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The  Temper  of  the  Workers  under  Trial.     Ibid.,  561-570. 
Work-Accidents  and  the  Law.     Charities  Publication  Com 
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Edwards,  Richard  Henry:  Immigration.  Studies  in  American 
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490  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Elkinton,  Joseph:  The  Doukhobors.  Charities,  13:  252-256 
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Emigration  from  Austria-Hungary.  See  Buzek;  Consular 
Officers;  Drage;  Graetz;  Hegediis;  Levay;  Mischler; 
Schwegel ;  Statistische  Monatsschrift ;  Stodola ;  Thirring ; 
Vay  de  Vaya  and  Luskod.  See  also  Appendix  viii, 
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Ethnology.  See  Boeckh;  Capek  (The  Slovaks  of  Hungary); 
Deniker;  Picker;  Komarow;  L6vy;  Niederle;  Rauch- 
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Evans,  Arthur  John:  Illyrian  Letters;  a  selection  of  corre 
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Albania,  Dalmatia,  Croatia  and  Slavonia,  addressed 
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Maps.  Longmans,  1878. 

Through  Bosnia  and  the  Herzegovina  on  foot  during  the 
Insurrection,  August  and  September,  1875;  with  an 
historical  review  of  Bosnia  and  a  glimpse  of  the  Croats, 
Slavonians,  and  the  ancient  Republic  of  Ragusa.  111. 
Longmans,  1876. 

Family  Life.    See  Byington;  Garret;  McDowell;  Sayles;  White. 

Farming.  See  Hening;  Horton;  Smalley.  See  also  Bohemians  in 
the  U.  S.,  Poles  on  Farms,  and,  for  conditions  in  Austria- 
Hungary,  see  Agriculture. 

Faust,  Albert  Bernhardt:  The  German  Element  in  the  United 
States;  with  special  reference  to  its  political,  moral, 
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Fehlinger  H.:  Die  Oesterreicher  in  den  Vereinigten  Staaten 
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Ferrario,  Giulio:  II  Costume  Antico  e  Moderno,  etc.  Folio. 
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Austria,  Croatia,  Polacchi,  Polonia.  Russi,  Russia, 
Russinie  o  Russniachi,  Slavinzi,  Slavi,  Slavoni  o 
Schiavoni,  Ungherese,  Ungheria. 

Ficker,  Adolf:  Ethnographische  Karte  der  Oest.-Ung.  Mon 
archic.  Nach  Frhr.  v.  Czoernig's  Karte  in  4 
Blatter,  reducirt  in  i  Blatt.  Mit  erklarendem  Text. 
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Die  Volkerstamme  der  Oes.-Ung.  Monarchic,  ihre  Gebiete, 
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tistisch  dargestellt ;  mit  4  Karten.  Mittheilungen  aus 
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.Fiction.  See  Bailey;  Connor;  Foster;  Franzos;  Freytag;  Gerard; 
Gogol;  Harriman;  Jirasek;  Johnson;  Mikszath; 
Nemec;  Neruda;  Orczy;  Przewa-Tetmajer;  Reuter; 
Ritter;  Sandor-Gjalski;  Sienkiewycz;  Steiner. 

First  Catholic  Slovak  Union  of  U.  S.  A.,  Constitution  and  By 
laws  ;  under  the  patronage  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  Patroness 
of  Hungary;  amended  at  the  XII  Convention  held 
in  1906,  at  McKeesport.  Organized  in  1890  at  Cleve 
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The  Steel  Industry  and  the  Labor  Problem.     Ibid.,   1079- 

1092  (Mar.  6,  1909). 
Fleming,  W.  L. :    Immigration  to  the  Southern  States.  Political 

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Folk-Lore.     See     Curtin;      Krauss;      Mijatovich;       Mijatovics; 

Wissenschaftliche   Mittheilungen  aus  Bosnien  und  der 

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Speeches);    Spera;    Zdrubek. 
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Frumar,  Adolph  and  Jursa,  Jan:     Slabikaf    pro    Skoly    Obecne. 

(Primer     for     Public     Schools.)       111.     by     M.     Ales. 

Cisafsky  Kralovsky  Skomi  Knihosklad.     Prague,   1902. 
Furdek,   Rev.    Stephen:    Jednota;  Katolicky  Kalendar,  pp.  196. 

111.      1907.      (Contains  a  list  of  Catholic  Slovak  colonies 

and  priests  in  the  United  States.) 
2ivot  Slovakov  v  Amerike.      (Life  of  Slovaks  in  America.) 

In  Tovarysstvo,  Vol.  iii  (1890).    Ruzomberok,  Hungary. 


Galicia.  See  Daszynska-Golinska ;  Dowie;  Franzos;  Gerard; 
Jandaurek;  Pennell;  Pilat;  Statistische  Mittheilungen 
iiber  die  Verhaltnisse  Galiziens;  Thomson.  See  also 
Agriculture;  Bukowina;  Ruthenians. 

Garret,  Laura  B.:  Notes  on  the  Poles  in  Baltimore.  Chari 
ties,  13:  235-239  (Dec.  3,  1904). 

Gerard,  Dorothea:  (Madame  Longard  de  Longarde) 

An    Impossible    Idyll.      (Story    of    an    English    family    in 

Galicia.) 

Orthodox.  Tauchnitz,  1891.  (Story  of  Galician  Jews.) 
This  and  the  following  novel  give  highly  interesting 
pictures  of  Ruthenian  life,  especially  in  priestly 
families. 


492  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Supreme  Crime.     Tauchnitz,  1901. 
The  Wrong  Man.     Appleton,  1896. 

Gibbons,  William  Frithey:  The  Adopted  Home  of  the  Hun: 
A  Social  Study  in  Pennsylvania.  American  Magazine 
of  Civics,  Sept.,  1895,  pp.  3I5~323- 

Gogol,  Nicolai  Vasilievitch :  Evenings  in  Little  Russia.  Trans. 
by  E.  W.  Underwood  and  W.  H.  Cline.  Pp.  xxiii, 
153.  Lord,  Evanston,  1903.  (Contains,  beside  preface, 
The  Fair  of  Sorotchinetz;  An  Evening  in  May;  Mid- 
Summer  Evening.) 

St.  John's  Eve.  Trans,  by  J.  H.  Hapgood.  Pp.  383. 
Crowell,  1886.  (Contains,  beside  introduction,  St. 
John's  Eve, — same  tale  as  Mid-Summer  Evening  in 
preceding  volume;  Old  Fashioned  Farmers;  The 
Tale  of  How  Ivan  Ivanovitch  quarrelled  with  Ivan 
Nikiforovitch ;  The  Portrait;  The  Cloak.) 
Evening  on  the  Farm  near  the  Dikanka.  (This  is  another 
translation  of  the  same  or  part  of  the  same  set  of 
poetical  tales  full  of  the  superstition  and  passion  of 
the  Little  Russian  peasant.) 

Taras  Bulba.  Trans,  by  Isabel  F.  Hapgood.  Pp.  295. 
Crowell,  1886.  (A  brilliant  sketch  of  Cossack  life 
among  the  Little  Russians  of  old.) 

Graetz,  Dr.  Victor:  Ueber  die  Auswanderungsfrage  in  Oester- 
reich.  Volkswirlschaftlichen  Wochenschrift,  Feb.  23, 
1905.  (Also  separately  printed.  Pp.  26.) 

Gregory,  John  G.:  Foreign  Immigration  to  Wisconsin.  Pro 
ceedings  State  Historical  Society  of  Wisconsin,  1901, 
pp.  137-143-  J9°2. 

Grose,  Howard  B.:  Aliens  or  Americans?  With  Introduction 
by  Josiah  Strong.  Young  People's  Missionary  Move 
ment.  Pp.  337.  New  York,  1906.  (In  series  of 
Forward  Mission  Study  Courses  of  Am.  Baptist  Home 
Missionary  Society.) 

Guide  to  the  Bohemian  Section  and  to  the  Kingdom  of  Bohemia. 
Bohemian  Section  at  the  Austrian  Exhibition,  Earl's 
Court,  London,  1906.  Pp.  224.  111.  Maps.  Wiesner, 
Prague,  1906.  (Contains  a  brief  bibliography  of 
English  works  relating  to  Bohemia.) 


Habernicht:  Dejiny  Cechu  Americkych,  Dil  tfeti;  Stdt  Texas. 
(History  of  American  Chekhs;  Third  Part;  the  State 
of  Texas.)  Copyrighted  by  the  Bohemian  Literary 
Society,  1904.  P'p.  129.  111.  See  Appendix  xiv,  page 
456,  for  further  reference  to  this  publication. 

Hall,  Prescott  F. :  Immigration  and  its  Effects  upon  the  United 
States.  Holt,  1906. 

Harriman,  Karl  Edwin:  The  Home  Builders.  Pp.  329,  London. 
(Stories  of  Polish- Americans.) 

Hegediis,  Lorant:  A  Magyarok  Kivdndorlasa  Amerikaba.  Az 
Amerikai  Magyar  Telepek — A  Felvidek  Nyomora — 
Kivandorlas  es  Bevandorlas  Szabalyozasa.  (The  Emi 
gration  of  Hungarians  to  America — The  American- 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  493 

Hungarian  settlements — The  Misery  of  Upper  Hungary 
— The   Regulation   of   Emigration   and    Immigration.) 
Pp.   102,  Budapest,   1899.     Reprinted  from  the  Buda- 
"        pest  Szemle  (Review). 

Henderson,  Major  Percy  E. :  A  British  Officer  in  the  Balkans. 
The  account  of  a  journey  through  Dalmatia,  Montenegro, 
Turkey  in  Austria  (sic},  Magyarland,  Bosnia  and 
Herzegovina.  Pp.  302.  111.  Lippincott,  1906. 

Herder,  Johann  Gottfried  yon:  Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  a 
History  of  Mankind.  Trans,  from  the  German  by 
Churchill.  Pp.  xvi,  632.  London,  1800. 

Herzegovina.    See  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina. 

Holbach,  Mrs.  M.  M.:  Dalmatia,  the  Land  where  East  meets 
West.  111.  London,  1908. 

Holt,  Hamilton,  editor:  The  Life  Stories  of  Undistinguished 
Americans  as  told  by  Themselves.  With  an  Intro 
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of  a  Polish  Sweatshop  Girl.  Pott,  N.  Y.,  1906. 

Housing.     See  Byington;   Crowell. 

Hrbek,  Sarah:  Bohemian  Citizens  have  done  much  for  Cedar 
Rapids.  Cedar  Rapids  Republican,  Semi-Centennial 
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Hruszewski,  Michael:      Geschichte    des    Ukrainischen    (Ruthen- 

ischen)  Volkes.     Vol.  i,  Leipzig,  1906. 

Die  Klein  Russen.  (In  Melnik,  J.  ed.  :  Russen  und  Russ- 
land.) 

Humpal-Zeman,  Josef  a :  Bohemia:  A  Stir  of  its  Social  Conscience. 

The  Commons,  July,  1904. 

The  Bohemian  People  in  Chicago.  (In  Hull  House  Maps 
and  Papers.  Pp.  viii,  230.  Crowell,  1895.)  Chapter 
vi,  115—131. 

Bohemian  Settlements  in  the  United  States.  Industrial 
Commission,  vol.  15,  pp.  507-510.  1901. 

Hungarian  Emigration.  American  Monthly  Review  of  Reviews, 
33  :  354-6.  1906. 

Hungarians.     See  Hungary. 

Hungarian  Statistical  Year  Book.  See  Annuaire  Statistique 
Hongrois. 

Hungary.  See  Alden;  Balch  (A  By  Election);  Bovill;  Bow- 
ring;  Browning;  Consular  Reports;  Irby;  Pink;  Recouly; 
Seton- Watson.  See  also  Slovaks. 

Hungary,  Emigration  From.  See  Emigration  from  Austria- 
Hungary. 

Hurban-Vajansky :     See  Vajansky. 

Hutchinson,  Frances  H. :  Motoring  in  the  Balkans  along  the  High 
ways  of  Dalmatia,  Montenegro,  the  Herzegovina  and 
Bosnia.  111.  Pp.  xiii,  341.  McClurg,  1909. 


Illegitimacy.     See  Spann. 

Immigrants'  Guides.     See  Immigration  Department,  Y.  M.  C.  A.; 
Roberts;  Rosicky;  Severance;  Sustersic. 


494  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

/ 

Immigration.     See  Emigration. 

Immigration  Commission,  Federal,  created  under  section  39 
of  the  Immigration  Act  of  Feb.  20,  1907.  Hearing 

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•  Statement  relative  to  the  work  and  expenditures  of  the 
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Steerage  Conditions,  Partial  Report  on.  6ist  Congress,  2nd 
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Importing  Women  for  Immoral  Purposes.  Report  from  the 
Immigration  Commission,  transmitting  in  response  to 
Senate  Resolution  No.  36  by  Senator  Lodge  a  partial 
report  to  Congress  on  the  Importation  and  Harboring 
of  Women  for  Immoral  Purposes.  6ist  Congress, 
2nd  Session,  Senate  Document  No.  196.  Pp.  61. 
Washington,  1909. 

Immigration  Department,  International  Committee  of  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association.  The  Country  to  Which 
You  Go.  Pp.  12.  How  to  Become  a  Citizen  of  the 
United  States.  Pp.  10.  (For  these  and  various  other 
pamphlet  publications  address  Dr.  Peter  Roberts,  124 
E.  28th  St.,  N.  Y.) 

Immigration,  Commissioner  General  (Federal)  of.  Annual 
Reports.  1895  (J-  H-  Senner) ;  1896  and  1897  (Her 
man  Stump);  1898,  1899,  1900  and  1901  (T.  V.  Pow- 
derly) ;  1902,  1903,  1904,  1905,  1906,  1907  (F.  P. 
Sargent);  1908  (A.  Warner  Parker,  Acting  Com.  Gen.); 
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Immigration  Statistics,  United  States,  1820—1892.  Treasury 
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grants  in  the  United  States  from  1820  to  1892.  Pre 
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Immigration,  Superintendent  (Federal)  of.  Annual  Reports. 
1892  (W.  D.  Owen),  1893  (Herman  Stump),  1894  (J.  H. 
Senner). 

Industrial  Commission,  vol.  15.  Reports  on  Immigration. 
Pp.  cxxvi,  840.  1901.  (An  invaluable  storehouse  of 
information;  the  rest  of  the  volume  is  separately 
paged  and  is  on  a  different  subject.) 

Industrial  Commission,  vol.  17.  1901.  Labor  Organizations, 
Labor  Disputes,  and  Arbitration  and  Railway  Labor. 
(Consult  index  under  Foreigners  and  Immigration.) 

Irby,  Miss:  Across  the  Carpathians. 


Jandaurek,  Julius:  Das  Konigreich  Galizien  und  Lodomerien 
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Jirasek,  A.:  Chodische  Freiheits  Kampfer.  Translated  into 
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Johnson,  Emily  S.:  Landless  Men.  Atlantic,  99:  335-345  (March 
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Wife  from  Vienna.      Atlantic,  97:  17-25  (Jan.,  1906). 

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Kova£evic,  Dr.  Milan:  Die  Auswanderung.  Agramer  Tagblatt, 
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Kraitser,  Charles:  The  Poles  in  the  United  States  of  America, 
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Krasinska,  Fran^oise,  Countess:  The  Journal  of  Countess 
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Krasinski,  H.:  The  Cossacks  of  the  Ukraine,  comprising  bio 
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Krasinski,  Count  Valerian  Skorobahaty:    Historical  Sketch  of  the 
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Krauss,  Dr.  Friedrich  Salomon:  Sagen  und  Marchen  der  Sud- 
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Slavische  Volksforschungen ;  Abhandlungen  tiber  Glauben, 
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Volksglaube  und  religioser  Branch  der  Slid  Slaven.  Pp. 
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Kruszka,  X.  Waclaw:  Historya  Polska  w  Ameryce;  Poczatek, 
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in  America;  origin,  growth  and  distribution  of  Polish 
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Kucera,  Magdalena:  The  Slavic  Races  in  Cleveland.  Charities, 
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Labor,  U.  S.  Department  of.  Charts  Exhibited  at  the  Pan- 
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Labor  Organization  and  Immigrants.  See  Commons;  Fitch; 
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Language.     See    Boeckh;     Die    Statistische    Bedeutung,    etc.; 

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Lee,  Joseph:  Assimilation  and  Nationality.  Charities  and  the 
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Le  Monde  Slave.  Pp.  xxii,  344.  2nd  edition.  Paris, 
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Nouvelles  Etudes  Slaves.  Histoire  et  Litterature.  Pp. 
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Recueil  de  Contes  Populaires  Slaves.  Traduits  sur  les 
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Russes  et  Slaves.  Etudes  politiques  et  litteraires.  le 
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Legislation  as  to  Emigration.     See  Levay;    Whelpley. 

32 


498  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Levay,  Baron  Louis  de,  Royal  Commissioner  of  Emigration:  The 
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Le"vy,  Daniel:  L'Autriche-Hongrie;  Ses  Institutions  et  ses  Nation- 
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Lichard,  Milan  and  Kolisek,  Rev.  Alois :  Slovak  Popular  Melodies. 
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Little  Russians.     See  Ruthenians. 

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Loydold,  L. :  Die  Ein-  und  Auswanderung  durch  den  Hafen 
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500 


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502  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Die  Polen  in  Rheinisch-Westfalischen  Kohlenbezirk.  Alldeut- 
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Poles  in  the  United  States.  Besides  above  references  on  Poles 
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mation  of  fellow  countrymen  newly  come  to  America, 
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paper  Hospodar,  from  the  experience  of  his  45  years' 
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Ruthenische.  Halbmonatsschrift ;  Editors  Basil  R.  v.  Jaworskyj, 
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Amerika,  mit  besonderer  Riicksicht  auf  die  Oester- 
reichisch-Ungarische  Auswanderung.  Zeiischrift  jur 
Volkswirtschaft,  Social  Politik  nnd  Verwaltung.  13: 
160—207  (I9°4)- 

"Scotus  Viator."       See  Seton- Watson. 

Sembratowycz,  Roman:  Das  Zarentum  im  Kampfe  mit  der 
Zivilisation.  Pp.  56.  Stern,  Vienna,  1905. 

Seton- Watson,  R.  W.  ("Scotus  Viator"):  Racial  Problems  in 
Hungary.  Pp.  xxvii,  540.  Plates.  Constable,  London, 
1908. 

Servia.     See  Bowring;  Durham;    Mijatovich;    Mijatovics. 

Severance,  Mary  F.:  A  Guide  to  American  Citizenship.  Pp. 
48.  1909.  (Published  in  various  languages.) 

Sheridan,  Frank  J.:  Italian,  Slavic  and  Hungarian  Unskilled 
Immigrant  Laborers  in  the  United  States.  U.  S. 
Bulletin  of  Labor,  No.  72.  Pp.  403-486.  Sept.,  1907. 

Shipman,  Andrew  J.:  Our  Russian  Catholics:  the  Greek 
Ruthenian  Church  in  America.  Part  I :  The  Greek 
Church  and  the  Union,  251-260.  Part  II:  The  Greek 
Catholic  Church  of  Today,  430-452.  Part  III:  The 
Greek  Catholics  in  the  United  States,  570-579  and 
663-673.  The  Messenger,  vol.  13,  1904.  Messenger 
Office,  27-29  West  i6th  St.,  New  York. 

Sienkiewycz,  Henryk:  With  Fire  and  Sword.  An  historical 
novel  of  Poland  and  Russia.  Translated  from  the 
Polish  by  Jeremiah  Curtin.  Boston,  1890. 

The  Deluge.  An  historical  novel  of  Poland,  Sweden  and 
Russia.  Translated  by  Jeremiah  Curtin.  2  vols. 
Boston,  1891. 

Pan  Michael.  An  historical  novel  of  Poland,  the  Ukraine 
and  Turkey.  Trans,  by  Jeremiah  Curtin,  Boston,  1896. 
(These  three  novels  in  this  order  are  the  famous 
"trilogy.") 

After  Bread.  A  Story  of  Polish  Emigrant  life  to  America. 
Trans,  by  Vatslaf  A.  Hlasko  and  Th.  N.  Bullick.  Pp. 
l65»  59-  (The  author,  perhaps  influenced  by  the 
opinions  prevailing  in  conservative  and  agrarian 
Polish  circles,  pictures  Polish  immigrants  who  perish 
miserably  in  America.)  Fenno,  N.  Y.,  1897. 

On  the  Field  of  Glory.  An  historical  novel  of  the  time  of 
King  John  Sobieski.  Trans,  by  Jeremiah  Curtin, 
Boston,  1896. 

Hania  (and  other  stories).  Trans,  by  Jeremiah  Curtin, 
Boston,  1900. 

Knights  of  the  Cross.      (A  story  of  the  struggle  of  Poland 


506  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

against  the  Teutonic  Knights.)     Trans,   by  Jeremiah 

Curtin,  Boston,  1900. 
Sielanka,    a    Forest     Picture,    and    other    stories.     Trans. 

by  Jeremiah  Curtin,  Boston,  1898. 
Yanko  the  Musician  and  other  Stories.     Trans,  by  Jeremiah 

Curtin,      Boston,  1893.      (AH  the  stories  in  this  collec 
tion  besides  others,  are  also  contained  in  "Sielanka." 
Skultety,     Jozef:       Venec      Slovenskych      narodnych      piesni. 

(Anthology  of  Slovak  national  songs.)     Pp.  288.      Turc 

St.  Martine,  1897. 
Slavic  Alliance  in  Cleveland.     Short  account  of  the  history,  its 

founding,    its    function    and    aims.      (Title    translated, 

published    in    various    Slavic    languages.)     Cleveland, 

1904. 
Die  Slaven  und  die  Nationalitatenfrage;    Gedankenskizze  von 

einen  Slovaken.     Pp.  40.     Prag,  1881. 
Slavonian-English    and    English-Slavonian    Pocket    Dictionary. 

(Slavonian     here     means     Slovak.)      Pp.    116.      Emil 

Nyitray,  77  First  Ave.,  N.  Y. 

Slavonic  (sc.  Slovak)  Evangelical  Union  of  America,  Incorporation 
and  Bylaws  of.  (In  English  and  Slovak.)  Pp.  72. 
Press  of  Slovenska  Pravda,  19  Main  St.  Freeland,  Pa., 
1903. 

Slawen,  article  in  Meyer's  Conversations  Lexicon. 

Slovak  American  Interpreter.  Novy  Anglicky  Tlumocnik  pre 
Slovakov  v  Amerike.  5th  edition.  Pp.  108.  Press 
of  Slovak  v  Amerike,  198  East  loth  St.,  N.  Y.  1904. 

Slovaks.  See  Aeltere  und  Neuere  Magyarisierungs  Versuche 
in  Ungarn;  Balch  (A  By  Election);  Browning;  Capek; 
Hegediis;  Irby;  Jurkovic;  Kcilal;  Lichard;  Die  Magyar- 
ische  Staatsi'dee;  Misik;  Niederle;  Ritter;  Ryb£k; 
Sasinek;  Seton- Watson;  Die  Slaven  und  die  Nation- 
alitaten  frage;  Stodola;  Die  Unterdriickung  der 
Slovaken;  Uprka;  Vajansky.  See  also  Emigration 
from  Austria-Hungary. 

Slovaks  in  the  United  States.  First  Catholic  Slovak  Union  of 
U.  S.  A.;  Furdek;  National  Slavonic  Society  of  the 
U.  S.  A.;  Rovnianek. 

Smalley,  E.  V. :  The  Isolation  of  Life  on  the  Prairie  Farm. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  72:  378-382  (1893). 

Smith,  Rufus  D.:  Some  Phases  of  the  McKee's  Rocks  Strike. 
Survey,  23:  38-45  (Oct.  2,  1909). 

Smythe,  E.  A.,  Viscountess  Strangef ord :  Eastern  Shores  of  the 
Adriatic.  1864. 

Somogyi,  Mano:  A  Hazai  Vandoripar  es  Vandorkeresked£s 
(Wandering  Dealers  and  Workers).  Pp.  61.  Buda 
pest,  1905. 

Sonnichsen,  Albert:  Confessions  of  a  Macedonian  Bandit. 
Pp.  268,  111.  Duffield,  1909. 

Spann,  Dr.  Othmar:  Die  Unehelichkeit  in  Oesterreich  nach 
Volkstammen  und  ihre  Entwiklung  im  letzten  Jahr- 
zehnt.  Statistische  Monatsschrift.  N.  F.  14:  120-122 
(1909). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  507 

Speia,    Josef:     Maly  Katechismus   v   Otazkach   a    Odpovedich 

gro     cesko-americke    Skoly    die     Katechismu     Patera 
ipina  (Little  Catechism  in  Questions  and  Answers  for 
Bohemian-American    schools    after    the    catechism    of 
Cipina).     Pp.  80.     Geringer,  150  W.  i2th  St.,  Chicago. 

Statistische  Mittheilungen  iiber  die  Verhaltnisse  Galiziens. 
Edited  by  Dr.  Th.  Pilat.  Statistisches  Bureau  des 
Galizisches  Landes-Ausschuss.  Lemberg. 

Statistische  Monatsschrift.  Herausgegeben  vom  Bureau  der 
K.  K.  Statistischen  Central  Commission.  1875.  In 
this  official  statistical  monthly  have  appeared  a  series 
of  papers  on  Austrian  emigration,  as  follows: 

Schimmer,  G. :  Auswanderung  Oesterreichs  1876.  iii, 
523-4.  1877.  Auswanderung  Oesterreichs  im  jahre 
1877.  v'  27-  l879-  Auswanderung  nach  den  Ver- 
einigten  Staaten  von  Nord  America,  v,  423-4.  1879. 
Auswanderung  Oesterreichs  im  Jahre  1878.  vi,  32. 
1880.  Auswanderung  aus  Oesterreich,  im  Jahre  1879. 
vii,  129-130.  1 88 1.  Auswanderung  Oesterreichs,  im 
Jahre  1880.  viii,  138-9.  1882.  Auswanderung  Oes- 
terreichische,  im  Jahre  1881.  viii,  595-6.  1882. 

Nagel,  Dr.  Emil:  Auswanderung  aus  Ungarn.  ix,  509. 
1883.  Oesterreichs  Auswanderung  im  Jahre  1882.  x, 
141-2.  1884.  Auswanderung  Oesterreichs  im  Jahre 
1883.  xi,  40-41.  1885. 

Schimmer:  Auswanderung  aus  Oesterreich  im  Jahre  1884. 
xii,  34-6.  1886.  Auswanderung  aus  Oesterreich  im 
Jahre  1885.  xiii,  132-4.  1887. 

Schmid:  Auswanderung,  die  uberseeische  oesterreichische 
im  Jahre  1886.  xiv,  39-42.  1888.  Auswanderung, 
die  uberseeische  oesterreichische  in  den  jahren  1887 
und  1888.  xvi,  149—164.  1890. 

Probst,  Dr.  Friedrich:  Auswanderung,  die  uberseeische 
oesterreichische  insbesondere  in  den  Jahren  1889 
und  1890.  xviii,  1—25.  1892.  Auswanderung,  die 
uberseeische  oesterreichische  im  Jahre  ki89i.  xix, 
379-388.  1893. 

Pilat,  Prof.  Dr.  Th.:  Auswanderung,  die,  aus  den  podo- 
lischen  Bezirken  nach  Russland  xix,  61-87,  1893. 

Mayr,  H.  v. :  Die  uberseeische  oesterreichische  Wanderung, 
1892-1895.  N.  F.  ii,  580-601,  1897. 

Buzek:  Die  uberseeische  oesterreichische  Wanderung 
in  den  Jahren  1896  bis  1898.  N.  F.  v,  72-105,  1900. 

Meinzingen,  Dr.  Franz  von:  Die  binnenlandische  Wander 
ung  und  ihre  Ruckwirkung  auf  die  Umgangssprache 
nach  der  letzten  Volkszahlung.  N.  F.  vii,  693-729, 
1902. 

Pfliigl,  Richard  v.:  Die  uberseeische  oesterreichische 
Wanderung  in  den  Jahren  1899—1901.  N.  F.  viii, 
496-532,  1903. 

Meinzingen,  Franz  v. :  Die  Wanderbewegung  auf  Grund 
der  Gebiirtigkeitsdaten  der  Volkszahlung  vom  31 
Dezember,  1900.  N.  F.  viii,  133—161,  1903. 

Pfliigl,  Richard  von:  Die  uberseeische  oesterreichische 
Wanderung  in  den  Jahren  1902  und  1903.  N.  F.  x, 
344-407,  1905.  Die  uberseeische  oesterreiche  Wan- 


508  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

derung  in  den  Jahren  1904  und  1905  und  die  Ein- 
wanderungsverhaltnisse  in  den  Wichtigsten  uber- 
seeischen  Staaten  in  diesen  Jahren.  N.  F.  xi,  495-509, 
573-629,  1906. 

Fehlinger,  H. :   Die  Oesterreicher  in  den  Vereinigten  Staaten 

von  Amerika.     N.  F.  xii,  172-5,  1907. 

.Loydold,  L. :  Die  Ein-  und  Aus\vanderung  durch  den  Hafen 
von  New  York  im  I  Semester  1908.  N.  F.  xiii, 
637-666,  1908. 

Pflugl,  Richard  v.:  Die  uberseeische  oesterreichische 
Wanderung  in  den  Jahren  1906  und  1907  sowie  die 
Einwanderungs  und  sonstige  Verhaltnisse  in  den 
wichtigsten  Einwanderungs  Staaten.  N.  F.  xiv, 
239-256,  308-324,  355-384,  408-440,  1909. 

Statistisches  Jahrbuch  der  Oesterreichischen  Monarchie  (con 
tinued  by  Oesterreichisches  Statistisches  Handbuch). 

Statistikai  Havi  Kozlemenyek  (Monthly  Statistical  Publications). 
Edited  and  Published  by  the  Royal  Central  Statistical 
Commission.  Budapest. 

Stead,  W.  T. :  The  Arrival  of  the  Slav.  Contemporary  Review, 
1909. 

Steerage.  See  Immigration  Commission,  Steerage  Conditions; 
Kapp;  Vay  de  Vaya  and  Luskod. 

Steiner,  Edward  A. :    The  Immigrant    Tide,    its  Ebb  and  Flow. 

111.     Pp.  370.     N.  Y.,  1909. 
The  Mediator:    A  tale  of  the  Old   World  and  the   New. 

Revell,  356,  1907.      (A  picture  of  Ghetto  Life.) 
On  the  Trail  of  the  Immigrant.     111.     Revell,  1906. 

Stewart,  Ethelbert:  Influence  of  Trade  Unions  on  Immigrants. 
In  La  Follette,  Robert  M.  ed.  The  Making  of  America, 
vol.  8.  Pp.  226-235,  Chicago. 

Stodola,  Dr.  Emil:  "Prispevok  ku  Statistike  Slovenska" 
(Contributions  to  Slovak  Statistics).  Pp.  31.  Tur- 
ciansky  Sv.  Martin,  1902.  Part  iv,  Emigration  to 
America,  pp.  14-21. 

Die  Auswanderung  der  Slovaken  nach  Amerika.  Articles 
on  Slovak  Emigration  in  Die  Politik  of  Prague  (June 
18,  20,  21,  1902). 

Strong,  Josiah  (Editor):  Immigration.  Facts  of  Immigra 
tion;  The  Immigrant  and  the  City;  Exclusion  Laws; 
The  Church  and  the  Foreigner.  (Part  of  The  Gospel 
of  the  Kingdom,  a  course  of  Study  for  men  and  women 
on  Living  Social  Problems  in  the  Light  of  the  Gospel 
of  Jesus  Christ.)  Published  monthly  by  the  American 
Institute  of  Social  Service.  Bible  House,  Astor  Place, 
N.  Y.  Pp.  65-72.  (June,  1909). 

Sustersic,  Rev.  F.  S.:  Poduk  Rojakom  Slovencem.  Ki  se 
hocejo  naseliti  v  Amerik.  (A  Guide  for  Slovenians.) 
Amerikanski  Slovenic  Press.  Joliet,  111.,  1903. 

varc,  V.:  The  Culture  which  the  Slav  Offers  America;  the 
Handicraft  and  Industrial  Exhibition  conducted  by 
the  Slavic  Alliance  of  Cleveland.  Charities,  14:  875- 
881  (July  i,  1905). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  509 

Talvi  (Mrs.  Robinson  born  Therese  von  Jacobi):  Historical 
View  of  the  Languages  and  Literature  of  the  Slavic 
Nations,  with  a  sketch  of  their  Popular  Poetry;  with 
a  preface  by  Edward  Robinson,  D.D.,  LL.D.  Pp.  ix, 
412.  Putnam,  1850. 

Tarde,  Gabriel:  The  Laws  of  Imitation.  Translated  by  Elsie 
Clews  Parsons,  with  an  Introduction  by  Franklin 
H.  Giddings.  Pp.  xxiv,  404.  Holt,  1903. 

Taxation.  See  Diplomatic  and  Consular  Service;  Drage;  Twar- 
dowski. 

Thirring,  Gustav:  Die  Auswanderung  aus  Ungarn;  Beitrage 
zur  Statistik  und  topographischen  Verteilung  der 
Auswanderung.  Bulletin  de  La  Societe  Hongroise 
de  Geographie.  Vol.  xxx,  1902  (also  separately  printed, 
pp.  29).  This  is  practically  the  gist  of  the  following 
Magyar  work. 

A  Magyarorszagi  Kivandorlas  es  A  Kiilfoldi  Magyarsag. 
Pp.  x,  366;  tables,  charts  and  maps.  Kilian,  Buda 
pest,  1904.  Reviewed  in  Tarsadalompolitikai  Kozle- 
menyek  (Social-politische  Mittheilungen)  by  Banyasz 
Laszlo. 

Thomson,  E.  W.:  Five  Days  in  Galicia.  (A  series  of  articles 
in  the  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  the  first  of  them 
under  date  of  Oct.  17,  1905,  describing  Ruthenian 
settlers  in  Canada). 

Titus,  Edward  Kirk:  The  Pole  in  the  Land  of  the  Puritan. 
New  England  Magazine,  N.  S.  Pp.  xxix,  162-166 
(Oct.,  1903). 

Tomkiewicz,  J.  W.  S.:  Polanders  in  Wisconsin.  Proceedings 
State  Historical  Society  of  Wisconsin,  1901.  Pp. 
148-152,  1902. 

Travels.  See  Durham;  Evans;  Henderson;  Hutchinson;  Irby. 
See  also  Albania;  Dalmatia;  Hungary;  Servia. 

Twardowski,    Dr.    J.    v. :   Statistische   Daten    iiber   Oesterreich. 

Pp.  125.     Leipzig,  1902. 
Tyler,    Elizabeth     S.:    The    Poles    in    the    Connecticut    Valley. 

Smith  College  Monthly,  16  :  579-586  (June,  1909). 


Umlauft,  Friedrich:  A.  Hartleben's  kleines  statistisches  Taschen- 
buch  iiber  alle  Lander  der  Erde.  Vienna,  1905. 

Uprka,  Joza:  Vybor  jeho  Praci  (Selections  from  his  work). 
(This  work  contains  39  large  and  very  fine  reproductions 
in  color  and  one  etching  from  Uprka's  pictures  of  the 
Slovaks  of  Moravia.  Accompanying  text^  [in  Bohe 
mian,  French  or  German]  by  Joseph  Klvatia  and  V. 
Mrstik.  The  Bohemian  text  has  extra  illustrations 
in  black  and  white  and  in  color.)  Published  in  two 
parts  by  "Unie,"  sold  by  B.  Koci,  Frantiskovo  Nab. 
14,  Prague  (1901). 

United  States  Census. 

Unterdriickung  der  Slovaken  durch  die  Magyaren.  Pp  76, 
Prague,  1903. 


510  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Vajansky,  Svetoza"r  Hurban:  Slovak  Popular  Poetry.  In  Seton- 
Watson,  Racial  Problems  in  Hungary,  pp.  362-372. 

Vay  de  Vaya  and  Luskod:  To  America  in  an  Emigrant 
Ship.  Living  Age,  252  :  173-182  (1907).  (From 
the  Monthly  Review.)  An  account  by  a  Hungarian 
chaplain  of  the  voyage  from  Fiume  to  New  York  and 
of  Hungarian  causes  of  emigration. 

Vertheilun»  des  Grundbesitzes  in  der  Bukowina.  Statistische 
Monatsschrift,  N.  F.  Vol.  xvii,  pp.  642-5  (1902). 

Verwyst,  Rev.  P.  C.:  Life  and  Labors  of  Rt.  Rev.  Frederic 
Baraga,  first  bishop  of  Marquette,  Michigan.  To 
which  are  added  short  sketches  of  the  Aims  and  Labors 
of  other  Indian  Missionaries  of  the  Northwest.  Wilt- 
zius,  Milwaukee,  1900. 

Viestnik,  Kr.  Zemaljskoga  Statistickoga  Ureda  v  Zagrebu. 
(Statistical  publications  of  the  royal  statistical  Bureau 
in  Agram.) 

Vlach,  J.  T.:  Our  Bohemian  Population.  Proceedings  State 
Historical  Society  of  Wisconsin,  1901.  Pp.  159-162, 
1902. 

Volkszahlung  vom  31.  Dezember,  1900,  in  den  Konigreichen 
Kroatien  und  Slavonien:  Hauptergebnisse  nach  Ver- 
waltungs-Gemeinden,  herausgegeben  vom  Kg.  Stat. 
Landesamte  in  Zagreb.  (In  German  and  Croatian.) 
Pp.  34.  Agram,  1902.  The  same,  Hauptergebnisse 
nach  Wohnorten  (in  German  and  Croatian).  Pp.  360. 


Wages.     See  Abbott ;  Commons ;  Fitch ;  Labor,  Dept.  of;  Sheridan. 
Waldau,  Alfred:    Bohmische    Nationaltanzen.     2    vols.    Prague, 

1860. 

Wandering  Trades,  Slovak.     See  Prochazka;    Somogyi;    Kalal. 
Warne,   F.   J.:     The   Coal-mine   Workers:     A   Study    in    Labor 

Organization.     Pp.  252.     Longmans,  1905. 
The  Slav  Invasion  and  the  Mine  Workers;  a  study  in  Immi 
gration.     Pp.  211.     Lippincott,  1904. 
Some    Industrial    Effects   of   Slav    Immigration.     Charities, 

13  :  223-226  (Dec.  3,  1904). 
The  Union  Movement  among  Coal-mine  Workers.     Bulletin 

of    U.    S.    Bureau    of    Labor,   No.  51.      Pp.    380-414. 

(Mar.,  1904.) 
Watchorn,    R.:    Gateway   of   the    Nation.     Outlook,    87  :    897- 

912  (1904). 
Whelpley,   F.   D.:     Control    of    Emigration    in    Europe.     North 

American  Review,  180  :  856-867  (June,  1905). 
White,    Elizabeth    T.:    Investigation    of    Slavic    Conditions    in 

Jersey  City.     Printed  for  Whittier  House  [a  Jersey  City 

Settlement],    1907. 

Whitman,  S.:   The  Realm  of  the  Habsburgs.     London,  1893. 
Wilkinson,  J.  G. :      Dalmatia  and  Montenegro.   2  vols.  London, 

1848. 
Wing,  Frank  E.:    Thirty-five  Years  of  Typhoid.     Charities  and 

the  Commons,  21  :  923-937  (Feb.  6,  1909). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  511 

Wing,  M.  T.  C.:  The  Flag  at  McKee's  Rocks.  Survey,  23  :  45-46 
(Oct.  2,  1909). 

Wingfield,  W.  F.:  A  Tour  in  Dalmatia,  Albania,  and  Monte 
negro,  with  a  Sketch  of  the  Republic  of  Ragusa. 
London,  1859. 

Wissenschaftliche  Mittheilungen  aus  Bosnien  und  der  Herze 
govina.  Gerold's  Sohn,  Vienna. 

Women  Immigrants.  See  Abbott;  Butler;  Immigration  Com 
mission;  Kellor. 

Wratislaw,  Albert  Henry:  Lyra  Ceskoslovanska.  Bohemian 
folk  songs,  ancient  and  modern,  translated  from  the 
original  Slavonic,  with  an  introductory  essay.  London, 
1849. 

Native  Literature  of  Bohemia  in  the  i4th  Century.     Four 
lectures  on  the  Ilchester  Foundation,  1878. 

Wright,  Carroll  D.:  Influence  of  Trade  Unions  on  Immigrants. 
Bulletin  of  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  No.  56,  pp.  1-8 
(Jan.,  1905). 


Zadruga.      (The  titles  under  this  head  are  not  listed  separately 

under  authors'  names.) 
Bogisic,  Dr.  V. :  Zbornik  Sadasnjih  Pravnih  Obicaja  u  Juznih 

Slovena  (Collection  of  present  customary  laws  among 

the  South  Slavs),  Agram,  1874. 
Demelic,  F.:    "Le  Droit  Coutumier  des  Slavs  Meridionaux" 

d'apres  les  recherches  de  M.  V.  Bogisitsch,  Paris,  1877. 

De  La  Forme  dite  Inokosna  de  la  Famille  Rurale  chez 

les  Serbes  et  les  Creates,  Paris,  1884. 
Cuculic,    Milorad    v.:     Studija    o    Zadruznom    Zakonu.  (A 

study  of  the  Zadruga  law.)     Agram,  1884  and  1885. 
Halladi,  Franz:    A  German  translation  of  the  Croatian  law 

as  to  land-holding  associations  (Grundgenossenschaften). 

Hardtmann,  Vienna. 

I  vie:    Die  Hauscommunionen.     Semlin,  1874. 
Janovic  &  Gruic:    Slavs  du  Sud.     Paris,  1853.     Pp-  I04-5- 
Laveleye,  Emile  de:  De  la  Propriete  et  ses  Formes  Primi 
tives  (translated  into  German  by  Karl  Bucher  as  Das 

Ureigenthum.      1879). 
Maine,  Sir  Henry  Sumner:   Ancient  Law. 

Village  Communities  in  the  East  and  West. 
Peisker:    Die  Serbische  Zadruga. 
Popovic:    Recht  und  Gericht  in  Montenegro.    Agram,  1877. 

(Pp.  32-50.) 
Spevac,  Dr.  J. :     O  Juristicnoj    Naravi  Zadruge.     (On   the 

juridical  character  of  the  Zadruga.)    Agram,  1884. 
v.    Tkalec:    Das    Staatsrecht    des    Furstenthums    Serbiens, 

Leipzig,  1858.      (Pp.  60-66  ) 
Turner:  Slavisches  Familienrecht.     Strassburg,  1874.      (For 

Zadruga  see  pp.  2,  u,  15,  50.) 
Utjesenovic:   Die  Hauscommunion  der  Sudslawen.    Vienna, 

1859. 
Vojnovic,   Dr.   K.  v. :    Seoska  Obitelj   Kod  Hrvata  i  Srba. 

(The  Peasant  Family  among  Croatians  and  Servians.) 

Agram,  1885. 


512  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Vrbanic,  Dr.  F.:  Rad  Hrvatskoga  Zakonarstva  na  Polja 
Uprave  od  g.  1861.  (Croatian  Administrative  Legisla 
tion  since  1861.)  Agram,  1893.  (Said  to  contain  an 
especially  instructive  passage  on  Croatian  Zadruga 
legislation.) 

Zoricic,  M. :  Die  bauerliche  Haus-Communion.    (See  below.) 

Zdrubek,  Frank  B.:  Dejiny  Cesko-Narodnfho  Hfbitova  v  Chi- 
cagu,  Illinois,  od  jeho  Zalozeni  1877  do  Jeno  2  5 -let  i 
jubilejni  slavnosti  1902.  111.  Pp.  144.  Geringer,  Chicago. 

Pohfebni  Reci  s  pfidanim  feci  pfi  pojmenovdni  ditek, 
fee  kmotra,  a  podekovani  otce.  (Funeral  addresses 
with  additional  speeches  for  use  at  the  naming  of  chil 
dren,  speech  of  the  sponsors  and  thanks  of  the  father.) 
Pp.  56.  Geringer,  Chicago. 

Zori6i£,  Milovan:  Demographische  Arbeiten  in  den  KOnigreichen 
Kroatien  und  Slavonien.  Pp.  70.  Agram,  1887. 

Die  bauerliche  Haus-Communion  in  den  KGnigreichen 
Kroatien  u.  Slavonien.  VIII  International  Congress 
for  Hygiene  and  Demography.  Budapest,  1894. 
Pp.  21.  Separately  printed,  Budapest,  1897. 

Nasi    izseljenici    u    sjedinj.    drzavama    Americkim.     (Our 
Emigrants  to  the  U.  S.  A.)     Viestnik  kr.  Zemaljskoga 
Statistickoga  Ureda  u  Zagrebu.      2  :  108,  1900. 
(This  appears  to  be  mainly  if  not  wholly  based  on 
American  material.) 

Statistische  Skizze  der  KSnigreiche  Kroatien  und  Sla 
vonien.  Pp.  170.  Agram,  1885. 


INDEX 


33 


INDEX 


ABANDONED  farms,  328-31,  340 

Abbazia,  152,  192 

Abbott,  Edith.  Women  in  In 
dustry,  357 

Abbott,  Grace.  Bulgarians  of 
Chicago,  296 

Accidents    and    injuries,    113, 

154-5'  3oo-303 
Actors,  Croatian,  169-70 
Adriatic  coast,  conditions  and 

emigration,  191-201 
Advertising    for     immigrants, 

52-53,  218-20,  332-35 
Africa,    immigration   to,    from 

Hungary,  438 
Africans,  illiteracy,  479 
Agents,  as  factors  in  emigra 
tion,  52-53,  80,  218,  279,  296, 

A  332-34 

Agram,  172-74,  284 
Agrarian     systems  —  Austria- 
Hungary,     38-49 ;     Croatia, 

i59-63i  Galicia,  i35>  I37~38. 
144 

Agricultural  conditions,  Aus 
tria-Hungary,  37—49,  85,  96— 
97,  120-22,  135,  137-38,  144, 
152,  158,  177-79,  194-95. 

43!-32 
Agricultural  machinery,  use  of, 

145.  34i 

Alabama,  Poles  in,  263 
Alaska — Montenegrins  in,  199; 

Servians  in,  274 
Alien  departures,  250-52,  286, 

294-96,  463 
Allegheny — Conditions  in,  419 ; 

Croatians  in,  271 
Allegheny    County,    industrial 

accidents,  301 
Alpine  race,  Slavs  an  offshoot 

of,  10 

American  employers,  immi 
grant  opinions  of,  60,  107, 

128,  154,  189,  300 
American  ideals,  405-466,  421— 

25 


American  labor  in  Pennsyl 
vania  coal  mines,  467 

American  law,  immigrant  con 
tempt  for,  367 

American  politics  and  Slavic 
immigrants,  393—95 

American  racial  decline,  328- 
31,  377,  403,  406 

American  Revolution,  Polish 
soldiers  in,  208—209 

American-Ruthenian  lyrics, 
128 

American  sharpers  and  the  im 
migrant,  296-97,  418-19 

American  type,  397-404,  410 

American  women — In  indus 
tries,  355— 56;  Slavic  opinion 

of,  377 

Americanization  of  Slavs,  34- 
36,  45,  56-62,  82,  113-19, 
143-4-4,  154,  181-83,  *97- 
98,  224-25,  284,  289-90, 
340,  352,  360-61,  37°-77» 
389-425 

Americans — Attitude  toward 
foreigners  and  immigrants, 
399,  408—10;  definition  of, 
398-403;  proportion  in  pop 
ulation,  5,  400—402 

Amsterdam,  embarkation  sta 
tistics,  436 

Amusement  places  for  immi 
grants,  146,  382 

Anaemia  among  Polish  immi 
grants,  376 

Anarchism  among  Slavic  Amer 
icans,  393 

Animals,  humane  treatment  in 
Croatia,  165 

Anthracite  coal  miners,  238- 
40,  290,  295,  297-99,  467 

Anthracite  coal  strike,  1902, 
290,  295 

Antislavery  views  among  im 
migrants,  216,  394 

Antwerp,  embarkation  statis 
tics,  436-37 


INDEX 


Architecture — Croatian,  164, 
172-74;  Slovak,  89 

Argentina,  Immigration  to, 
from  Hungary  438 

Arkansas — Bohemians  in,  261; 
Poles  in,  263;  Slavic  farm 
ers,  469;  Slovaks  in,  337 

Armenians,  illiteracy,  479 

Army  service.  See  Military 
service. 

Art  crafts  among  the  Slovaks, 
89-91,  in,  355 

Artists,  Slavic,  284 

Aryan  languages,  classification, 

*3 

Assimilation — Bohemian  im 
migrants,  207,  221-25,  260; 
Dalmatians,  197-98;  Slavs, 

27,  36,  58,  290-94,  310,  340, 
342,  396-425;  Slovaks,  337- 
38.     See    also    Germanizing; 
M  a  gy  arizing. 

Assisted    emigration,     50,     80, 

139 

Associations.  See  Organiza 
tions. 

Austria — Population,  48,  429- 
30;  Wages,  56,  432 

Austria-Hungary  —  Conditions 
in,  28-36;  emigration  from, 

28,  34-62,    73-74,    102-105, 
133.     152-53.     i78-79.    183, 
246,  248-49,  433-44,  460-61 ; 
ethnical  map,  32;   maps,  30, 
32,   35;    money  orders  sent 
to,  471—73;    political  condi 
tions,  29—33;    population  by 
languages,  429-31 

Austrian  Poland.    See  Galicia. 

Austrians — How  name  is  ap 
plied,  7,  148;  in  the  U.  S., 
211-13,  234,  244,  254;  occu 
pations,  312-313,  353-54 

Autonomy,  modern  struggle 
for,  396 


BACK-TO-THE-FARM  movement, 
335-40 

Bakers — Bohemian,  77,  226; 
Slavic,  314 

Balkan  Slavs— R61e  in  Euro 
pean  history,  23-24 

Balkan  States — Ethnical  map, 
32;  immigration  to  from 
Hungary,  442 


Ballads — Bohemian,  83;  Slo 
vak,  88 

Baltimore,  Bohemians  in,  259 

Bank  deposits  of  immigrants, 
304-309 

Banks — Insecurity  of  private 
banks,  304-305  ;  Slavic,  308- 

3°9 
Baraga,     Frederic,     Slovenian 

bishop,  231-33 
Bards,  Montenegrin,  164,  201 
Bar-tenders,  Slavic,  314 
Bathory,  Countess,   legend  of, 

87-88 
Beet-sugar  industry,  Bohemia, 

122 
Belgians  in  the  United  States, 

217 
Benefit  societies.     See  Mutual 

benefit  societies. 
Bergman,    Silesian    immigrant 

to  Texas,  215 
Bethlehem,    Penn.,    Moravian 

settlers,  208 
Bishops  among  Poles  in  United 

States,   233,  388-89;   among 

Slovenians  in  United  States, 

233.  389 

Bituminous  coal  miners,  Penn 
sylvania,  467 

Blacksmiths — Slavic,  315;  Slo 
vak,  97,  226 

Blizzards — Galicia,  376;  Ne 
braska,  345-46 

Boarding  costs  for  farm  labor, 
Austria,  432 

Bohemia — Conditions  in,  31, 
63-84,  122;  emigration  from, 
63-84,  434;  population,  48; 
wages,  56 

Bohemia  Manor,  Maryland,  68, 
206 

Bohemian  Brethren,  67-69, 
208 

Bohemian  churches  in  the  U.  S. , 
215,  386 

Bohemian  exiles,  67-69,  208- 
210,  224,  227 

Bohemian  language,  14-15, 
22-23,  82;  43° 

Bohemian  literature  of  Ameri 
can  settlement,  456-57 

Bohemian      nursery      rhymes, 

444-45 
Bohemian  societies  in  America, 

377-3° 
Bohemians — As    farmers,     37, 


INDEX 


517 


46,  56,  77;  emigration  from 
Croatia-Slavonia,  454;  forms 
and  use  of  name,  7-8,  73-74; 
illiteracy,  96,  479;  in  Europe, 
statistics  of ,  1 7 ;  occupations, 
46,  76-78;  statistics  of,  17, 
70—78,  248,  460-64 

Bohemian's  in  the  U.  S.,  63-84; 
Bohemian  literature  of,  456— 
5  7  ;  building  and  loan  associ 
ations,  306-307;  distribu 
tion  and  history,  206-28, 
254,  256-61,  281;  farmers, 
214-17,  221,  224,  243,  320- 

.     36,    341;   land   owners,    323; 
mine  and  foundry  workers, 
317;     occupations,     226—27, 
282,    311-16,    320,    353-57. 
470;    statistics,  244,  248-50^ 
254,  256-61,  281,  433,  460-" 
64;     women    workers,     355, 
376-77 

Bookbinders,  Bohemian,  226 

Bora,  158 

Bosnia — Conditions  and  emi 
gration,  198,  249;  Servians 
in,  156,  273 

Bosnians — How  name  is  ap 
plied,  8;  illiteracy,  479;  in 
the  U.  S.,  195,  249-50,  433, 
460-64 

Bratstvo,  21 

Brazil,  Slavic  immigration  to, 

438-.  45 1 

Breaking  prairie,  347-48 

Bremen,  embarkation  statis 
tics,  436 

Brewers,  Bohemian,  226 

Brigands,  120 

British  Columbia,  Servians  in, 
274 

British  immigrants,  character 
of,  237 

British  North  America — Slavic 
immigration  from,  249;  Sla 
vic  immigration  to,  438 

Brockway,  Minn.,  330-31 

Budweis  —  Emigration  from, 
75;  government  tobacco  fac 
tory.  357 

Buffalo,  N.Y.,  Poles  in,  231,  263 

Buffer  states  in  European  his 
tory,  23-24,  86-87,  I27.  T59 

Building  and  loan  associations, 
306-307 

Building  trades,  Slavic  labor, 
77,  226,  282,  314 


Bukowina — Conditions  in,  31; 
map,  123;  population,  48; 
wages,  56 

Bulgaria,  conditions  and  emi 
gration,  199,  249 

Bulgarian  churches  in  the  U. 
S.,  387 

Bulgarian  language,  14,  199, 
276 

Bulgarians — Forms  and  use  of 
name,  7,  8,  275;  illiteracy, 
479;  in  Europe,  statistics  of, 
17;  in  the  U.  S.,  195,  199, 
237,  249-50,  273-76,  281, 
296-97,  433,  460-64;  na 
tional  characteristics,  275- 
76;  occupations,  274 

Businessmen — Bohemian,  282; 
Dalmatian,  272;  Slavic,  305— 
310,  442-55 

Butchers — Bohemian,  7 7, -2 26; 
Slavic,  314 

Butler,  Elizabeth  B.  Women 
and  the  Trades,  355 


CALEDONIA,  Wis.,  Bohemian 
settlers,  210,  220 

California — Bohemians  in,  70, 
210— n,  261,  326;  Dalma 
tians  in,  195—96,  207,  210, 
235,326;  Poles  in,  262;  Rus 
sians  in,  278;  Slavic  farmers 
in,  469;  Slavs  in,  235,  326; 
Slovenians  in,  270 

Calumet,  Michigan — Co-opera 
tive  store,  309 ;  Croatians  in, 
272,  309,  338;  Slavic  prop 
erty  owners,  307;  Slovenians 
in,  233,  270 

Canada — Russians  in,  279; 
Ruthenians  in,  128,  140, 
268-69,  338-39,  353,  449- 
50;  Servians  in,  274 

Carinthia — Conditions  and  em 
igration,  148-55 ;  population, 
48;  wages,  56 

Carnegie  Relief  Fund,  302 

Carniola — Conditions  and  emi 
gration,  148-55,  232-33,  249, 
451-52;  occupations,  46 ; 
population,  48;  wages,  56 

Carpathian  region,  29,  33,  85, 
120,  236 

Carpenters,  joiners  and  build 
ers,  Bohemian,  77,  226 


INDEX 


Castoria,  Bulgarians  from,  275 

Caterers,  Dalmatian,  283 

Catholic  church.  See  Roman 
Catholic  church. 

Causes  of  emigration,  48-56, 
67,  69-72,  75-81,  99-101, 
.108,  118-19,  J31.  X35>  X37~ 
38,  140,  152-53,  163,  174- 
80,  194-96,  208-10,  213,  218, 
237-44,  275,  277-79,  452 

Cedar  Rapids,  Iowa,  Bohe 
mians  in,  223—25 

Celebrations  among  Slavic  im 
migrants,  366-67 

Celibacy  among  Ruthenian 
priests,  130 

Census  data,  criticism  of  for 
this  use,  458-59 

Census  of  1850,  210-211 

Census  of  1850-1880,  211—213 

Census  of  1900,  252,  254,  261 

Central  America,  Servians  in, 
274 

Chalupnik,  43 

Charcoal  burners,  Slavic,  314-15 

Cheap  labor,  immigration  and 
wages,  77,  237-44,  282-310, 
465-66 

Chekh,  forms  of  name,  7,  8 

Chernembl,  153 

Chicago — Bohemians  in,  76, 
227,  259,  306-307;  Bulga 
rians  in,  296-97;  Croatians 
in,  271,  338;  Jews  in,  234; 
packing-house  strike,  1904, 
290—91;  Poles  in,  214,  231,. 
263,  306—307;  Slovenians  in, 
233,  269 

Child-bearing  among  Slavic 
peasant  women,  376—7 

Child  labor,  in  mining  dis 
tricts,  caused  by  immigra 
tion,  299 

Child  peddlers,  98 

Chinese  illiteracy,  479 

Choral  societies,  382 

Church  and  state,  separation 
of,  effect  on  Slavic  immi 
grants,  385 

Church  organization  among 
Slavic  immigrants,  384—90, 
459-60 

Church  schools.  See  Parochial 
schools. 

Church  Slavonic  language,  13 

Cigar  makers — Bohemian,  79, 
227,282,357-60;  Slavic,  354 


Citizenship,  among  Slavic  im 
migrants,  330,  395,  424-25 

City,  movements  toward,  76, 
99,  151,  226-27,  243-44,  259, 
264,  317-19,  336,  351,  376 

Civilization — Changes  in,  56- 
62;  factors  of,  4,  424 

Civil  War,  American — Bohe 
mian  soldiers  in,  216-17, 
228;  Polish  soldiers  in,  132, 
228,  229 

Clannishness  of  immigrants, 
319,  398-400,  410-17 

Clapp,  Francis,  Poles  brought 
to  Massachusetts  by,  241 

Class  consciousness,  among 
Slavs,  290 

Classification  of  nationalities, 
13—14,  17—18,  122,  126,  245- 
49,  272-73,  275,  277 

Cleanliness,  among  Slavic  im 
migrants,  374 

Clerks  and  accountants,  Bo 
hemian,  77 

Cleveland,  O. — Bohemians  in, 
215,  226,  259;  Poles  in, 
231;  Slovenians  in,  155,  269 

Climate — Croatia,  i58;Galicia, 
121,  376;  Nebraska,  345 

Clothes.     See  Costumes;  Dress. 

Clubs  and  societies  among  im 
migrants,  117,  301-302,  305- 
306,  377-95 

Coal  mining  and  immigrant 
labor,  238-40,  282,  297-99, 
467 

Cobblers,  Bohemian,  226 

Coke  burners,  Slavic,  282,  289, 

3*4-15 

Colonies  of  immigrants  in  the 
TL  S.,  131,  176,  209—10,  214— 
15,  220,  226-29,  233,  243- 
44,  259,  264,  270,  274,  278, 

324,  337-39   , 

Colonization  bureaus.  See 
Agents. 

Colorado — Bohemians  in,  261; 
Poles  in,  262;  Slavic  farmers 
in,  469;  Slovenians  in,  270 

Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Com 
pany,  303 

Comenius,  Harvard's  invita 
tion  to,  67-68 

Commassation,  41 

Commercialism  in  American 
life,  420—22 

Commercial  traits  of  Slavs,  44, 


INDEX 


61-62,   193,   196,  272,  282, 

473-74 
Communistic  institutions,  21, 

161-63, 
Compensation  for  injuries,  302- 

Competition — Slav  and  Ameri 
can  labor,  284-301,  342; 
women  and  men,  355-56, 
358 

Congestion  of  population, 
causes  and  nationalities,  294, 
342,  350-51,  362-63 

Congressional  encouragement 
to  immigration,  218 

Congressional  land  grants  to 
Poles  in  U.  S.,  209 

Connecticut  —  Bohemians  in, 
261;  Poles  in,  262;  Russians 
in,  278;  Slavic  farmers  in, 
469;  Slavs  in,  254 

Connecticut  valley,  Slavs  in, 
240-42,  327-29,  342 

Consciousness  of  kind.  See 
Social  consciousness. 

Conservation  of  human  life, 
302-303 

Continuation  schools,  in  Croa 
tia,  1 68 

Contract  labor,  and  immigra 
tion,  238-39,  297-98,  405 

Cooking  arrangements  in  im 
migrant  boarding  houses, 

35o-5i 

Co-operative  boarding  groups, 
360 

Co-operative  movements  — 
Slavs  in  America,  309,  332, 
363-64 ;  Slovaks  in  Europe, 
96 

Coopers — Bohemian,  226;  Cro 
atian,  283;  Slovenian,  270 

Cossacks,  127 

Cost  of  living — American  fac 
tors  in  reducing,  5  4-5  5 ; 
Slav  boarders,  329,  350-51; 
Slav  families,  363-73 

Costumes — Bohemian,  72,  82; 
Dalmatian,  192—93;  Gali- 
cian,  147;  Slavic,  57-58; 
Slovak,  90-93,  101;  Slove 
nian,  154 

Cottagers, Austria-Hungary,  43 

Counter  Reformation,  149 

Credit,  in  Croatia,  179-80 

Crime — Croatia,  169-72;  Slav 
immigrants,  366-70 


Crimean  War,  impulse  to  Dal 
matian  emigration,  195 
Crnagora.     See  Montenegro. 
Croatia.    See  Croatia-Slavonia. 
Croatian  churches  in  the  U.  S., 

387 

Croatian,  forms  and  use  of 
name,  7,  8 

Croatian  language.  See  Servo- 
Croatian  language. 

Croatians  —  Artistic  ability, 
284;  emigration  from  and 
return  to  Hungary,  441,  443; 
emigration  from  Croatia- 
Slavonia,  454;  emigration 
from  Istria,  198;  farmers, 
177-79,  272,  338;  illiteracy, 
479;  in  the  U.  S.,  167-68, 
176-83,  237,  249-50,  256, 
271-72,  281,  295,  433,  460- 
64;  national  characteristics, 
156,  159-60;  occupations, 
176,  271-72,  283,  455;  sense 
of  national  tradition,  150 

Croatia-Slavonia — Civil  popu 
lation  by  languages,  430; 
conditions  and  emigration, 
156-90,  249,  44i-43»  452-55; 
map  of  county  boundaries 
and  railroads,  173;  occupa 
tions  in,  176;  political  rela 
tions,  31;  Servians  in,  273; 
Slovaks  in,  86 

Cubans,  illiteracy,  479 

Cultural  elements  and  effects, 
57—62,  82-84,  89-93,  I][7> 
127—28,  141-47,  150,  167— 
74,  189,  192,  209,  224,  227, 
283-84,  310,  370-73,  380-95, 
406 

Culture  as  a  factor  in  nation 
ality,  10,  15 

Culturkampf ,  as  impulse  to 
emigration,  214 

Czech,  forms  of  name,  7,  8 


DABOVICH,  Rev.  Sebastian.  Es 
timate  of  Servians  in  U.  S., 
273-74 

Dakotas — Bohemians  in,  227, 
235;  Dalmatians  in,  196; 
Poles  in,  262;  Russians  in, 
278;  Slavic  farmers  in,  320, 
469;  Slavs  in,  254,  261 

Dalmatia — Conditions  and  em 
igration,  152,  156,  191-98, 


520 


INDEX 


249;  occupations  in,  46,  192; 
population,  48 ;  Servians  in, 
273;  wages,  56 

Dalmatians — How  name  is  ap 
plied,  8;  illiteracy,  479;  in 
the  U.  S.,  195-98,  210,  237, 
-  249-50,  258,  271-73,  281, 
433,  460-64;  national  char 
acteristics,  193,  196-97;  oc 
cupations,  46,  192,  272,  283, 
326 

Dancing,  146-47 

Dangerous  occupations,  Slav 
labor  in,  154-55,  282,  294, 
298-99,  300-301,  355,  379 

Day  laborers  —  Austro-Hunga- 
rian  peasantry,  43;  emigra 
tion  from  Croatia-Slavonia, 
455;  nationality  of  immigrant 
labor,  238,  282,  464-66;  pro 
portion  among  immigrants, 
77,  286,  312—15,  442;  wages, 
55—56,  285-90,  293,  463-66 

Deaths  by  industrial  accidents, 
301-303 

Delaware — Poles  in,  262; 
Slavic  immigration  to,  68 

Democratic  party  among  Slavic 
Americans,  395 

Detroit,  Poles  in,  231,  263 

Dignovity,  Dr.,  Bohemian  im 
migrant,  69,  209 

Displacement  of  English-speak 
ing  labor,  297-301 

Distribution  of  immigration — 
Causes  of,  217-20,  227—28, 
233.  237-44,  320-38;  statis 
tics,  234-35,  253-81,  320-30, 
459—60,  468—69 

Distribution  of  Slavs  in  Eu 
rope,  16-19 

Division  of  labor — Demands  on 
intelligence,  317-18;  effect 
on  wages,  288 

Dolinas,  158 

Domazlice,  emigration  from, 
71-72 

Domestic  animals,  in  Croatia, 

l65,  J77 
Doukhobors    in    Canada,    279, 

332 

Dowry,  among  Slavs,  42,  166 

Drahtbinder,  97 

Drama — Among  Bohemian  im 
migrants,  382;  Croatian, 
167-70 

Dress — Among    Slavic    immi 


grants,  360-61,  370-72.    See 

also  Costumes. 
Dressmakers,  Slavic,  354 
Drifton,  Penn.,  an  early  goal, 

238-39 

Drink  habit.     See  Liquor  habit 

Drotars,  97,  99 

Dubrovnik.     See  Ragusa. 

Dug-outs  in  Nebraska,  344 

Duquesne,  Ruthenian  family 
in,  144 

Dutch,  illiteracy,  479 

Dyers — Bohemian,  226;  Slo 
vak,  97 


EARLY  settlers  in  the  United 
States,  63-84, 131-34,  205-34 

Eastern  States,  farm  condi 
tions,  322,  326-31 

Eastman,  Crystal.  Study  of 
industrial  accidents,  301 

Economic  changes  due  to  emi 
gration,  62,  81-82,  112-119 

Economic  changes  due  to  im 
migration,  4-5,  286-90,  297- 
3.10 

Economic  conditions  in  Amer 
ica — As  a  factor  in  immigra 
tion,  218-20,  237—44,  247, 
282-377,  4p4-405,  452;  con 
trasted  with  Austria-Hun 
gary,  54-56,  317-19 

Economic  conditions  in  Europe, 
in  relation  to  emigration,  49- 
62,  70,75-81,99,108,121-22, 
135-41,  152-53,  163,  174-80, 
194-96,  213,  275,  279,  452 

Economic  conditions  of  immi 
grants — Bohemians,  221-22, 
224,  226-27,  229—30;  Poles, 
317;  Slavs,  282-348,  379-81, 

455 

Education — Efforts  for,  among 
immigrants,  351—52,  381-84, 
416-1 7;  474,  477-78;  higher 
education  of  Slav  immi 
grants,  283,  343,  381;  in 
Croatia,  157,  167-70;  in 
Dalmatia,  196-97;  in  Gali- 
cia,  141;  in  Hungary,  110- 
ii 

Embarkation  statistics,  435-38 
Embroidery,     Slovak,     91-92, 

in,  355 

Emigrants,  return  to  home 
country,  61,  102,  116-19, 


INDEX 


521 


144—45,  154,  181,  286,  294- 
96,  300,  443,  463 

Emigration  —  Causes,  48-56, 
67,  69-72,  75-81,  99-101, 
108,  118-19,  13*.  J35>  137- 
38,  140,  152-53,  163,  174-80, 
194-96,  208-10,  213,  218, 
237-44,  275,  277,  452;  char 
acter  of,  37-201,  213,  223, 
227,  237-43,  258-59,  279, 
283,  293-94,  442;  effects  on 
America,  4-5,  62,  114,  286- 
90,297—310,398—425;  effects 
on  home  country,  62,  81-82, 
112-119,  144-45,  zSi— 83;  ef 
fects  on  the  emigrant,  56- 
62,  63-64,  113-19,  143-44, 
154-55,  170,  181-83,  197-98, 
224-25,  284,  289-90,  340, 
352,  360-61,  370-77,  389- 
425 ;  from  Austria-Hungary, 
433-44;  from  Slavic  coun 
tries,  34-201,  433-44;  from 
the  U.  S.,  see  Emigrants  re 
turn  to  home  country. 

Employers'  liability,  301-303 

Encouragement  of  immigra 
tion,  federal,  209,  218;  state, 
218-20;  commercial,  52—3, 
80,  219-20,  279,  296,  332-4 

Endurance  of  Slavic  peasant 
women,  175,  376 

English — Domination  of,  in 
America,  3-4,  398-403;  il 
literacy,  479;  in  the  U.  S., 
3~4,  237,  315,  398-403;  oc 
cupations,  315 

English  language  as  spoken  by 
Slavic  immigrants,  143-4 

English  language,  persons  in 
U.  S.  not  speaking,  402 

English  language,  relation  to 
the  immigrant's  language, 
414-18,  478;  value  to  immi 
grant,  285,  411,  417 

English-speaking  labor,  as  af 
fected  by  Slav  labor,  284- 

301 

Environment — Along  Adriatic 
coast,  191-93;  as  a  factor  in 
civilization,  5,  193,  196,  411, 
418-20;  in  Austria-Hungary, 
28-36;  in  Bohemia,  75;  in 
Croatia,  157-65;  in  Galicia, 
120-31;  in  Slovensko,  85; 
of  American  farmers,  318- 
19,  322;  Slovenians,  152 


Epic  singers,  Montenegro,  164, 
201 

Ethnical  maps — Austria-Hun 
gary  and  Balkan  states,  32; 
Galicia  and  Bukowina,  123; 
Slavic  distribution  in  U.  S., 

257  . 

Eugenics,  American,  403-404 
Europe,  18;   languages  spoken 

in    Galicia    and    Bukowina, 

123 
Europe,  map  showing  location 

of  Slavic  races,  18 
European  history,  Slavic  forces 

in,   20-27,  87-88,   127,   148- 

49,  159 
Exclusion  of  immigrants,  cost 

of,  406-407 
Exhaustion      from      American 

overwork,  154-55,   181,  300, 

357 


FACTORY  industries,  Slavic,  99, 

i39 

Factory  workers,  Slavs  in,  282; 
Slavic  women  in,  354-60 

Family  budget,  363-64 

Family  life.    See  Household  life. 

Famines  in  Nebraska,  346-47 

Farm  villages,  318-19 

Farmers — Austrian,  469 ;  Bo 
hemian,  37,  46,  58,  77,  214- 
17,  221,  224,  320-36,  341, 
469;  Carniolan,  46,  56;  Cro 
atian,  177-79,  272,  338,  455; 
Dalmatian,  46,  56;  Galician, 
46,  56,  137-39;  Hungarian, 
469;  Italian,  318-20;  Polish, 
46,  56,  137-39,  320-36,  469, 
473-74;  Russian,  279,  320, 
469  ;  Ruthenian,  268-69,  338- 
39;  Slavic,  312-48,  442,  455, 
469-70;  Slovak,  336-38;  Slo 
venian,  233,  270,  339-40; 
wages,  56,  138 

Farming  by  Slavic  immigrants, 
115,  139-40,  217,  220—21, 
224,  233,  243,  268-69,  270, 
282,  312-48,  468-70 

Farming,  co-operative,  332 

Farm  labor — Relation  to  im 
migration,  4,  76-77,  240-42, 
279,  318,  327,  342,  442,  469; 
wages,  56,  138,  286,  327,  432 

Farm  life  in  America,  317—19, 
323-25,  338-  342-48,  352 


522 


INDEX 


Farm  machinery,  use  of,   1*4  5, 

34i 

Farm,  return  to  the,  335-40 
Farm     servants,     in     Austria- 

Hungary,  43,  46,  56,  142 
Farm    settlement,     promotion 

of,  332-38 
Federal  encouragement  to  im 

migration,  209,  218 
Fee  system,  abuse  of,  367-68 
Feudal    survivals    in    Austria- 

Hungary,  38-42,  149 
Filip,  Bedrich,  68-69,  2°6 
Filipinos,  illiteracy,  479 
Finns  —  Illiteracy,    479;     occu 

pations,  316 
First  comers,  to  Pennsylvania 

mines,  238;   the  r61e  of,  242 
Fishermen,     Dalmatian,     192, 

283 
Fitch,  J.  A.     The  Steel  Indus 

try  and  the  Labor  Problem, 

293 

Fiume  —  Embarkation  statis 
tics,  436-37;  Italians  in, 
191;  political  relations,  31 

Florida,  Poles  in,  263 

Folklore  and  songs  —  Bohe 
mian,  65,  83;  Slovak,  86-87 

Folksongs  —  Croatian,  163-64; 
Ruthenian,  128 

Food    of    Slavic    immigrants, 


Forest  destruction  —  Adriatic 

coast,   192;  Slovensko,    95 
Franciscan  missionary  in  Tex 

as,  228 
Free-thought  movement  among 

Bohemian   immigrants,  220, 

381,  390-92 
French,  illiteracy,  479 
French-Canadians  —  In    the  U. 

S.,  238,  353;  occupations,  353 
Friends,  Society  of,  279 
From  my  Village,  183-90 
Fuel  in  Slavic  households,  365 
Furdek,  Father,  337 
Furriers,  Bohemian,  226 


GAJ,  Louis,  leader  of  "Illy- 
rian"  movement,  150 

Galicia — Conditions  in,  3 1 ,  1 20- 
47;  emigration  from,  120- 
47,  248;  map,  123;  occupa 


tions,  46,  137,  140;  popula 
tion,  48;  wages,  56 

Galicians  in  Canada,  449-50 

Galveston,  Tex.,  80,  216,  224, 
228,  290 

Gazvoda,  Miss.  From  my  Vil 
lage,  183-90 

Genoa,  embarkation  statistics, 
436. 

Georgia — Moravians  in,  208; 
Poles  in,  263 

Germanization  of  Slavic  peo 
ples,  19,  21—22,  125,  148-49, 
154,  191,  397 

German  language  in  Austria- 
Hungary,  429-3° 

Germans — Conflict  with  Bohe 
mians,  78;  emigration  from 
and  return  to  Hungary,  441, 
443;  emigration  from  Croa- 
tia-Slavonia,  454;  illiteracy, 
78,  479;  in  Austria-Hun 
gary,  33,  445-47;  in  Bohe 
mia,  75;  in  Hungary,  445- 
47;  in  Slovensko,  99—100; 
in  the  U.  S.,  4,  78,  133,  210- 
ii,  217,  315,  374,  460-64; 
occupations,  315,  353 

Germany — Slavic  immigration 
from,  248-49;  Slavic  immi 
gration  to,  139,  442 

Gipsies — Called  Bohemians,  74; 
in  Austria-Hungary,  431;  in 
Slovensko,  88-90 

Glass  setting,  Slovak  trade,  98 

Gold  discovery  in  California, 
cause  of  emigration,  70,  210 

Gorale,  122 

Goricia-Gradisca  —  Conditions 
and  emigration,  152,  191; 
population,  48;  wages,  56 

Gottschee,  153-54 

Government  policies,  toward 
emigration,  Hungarian  52— 
53;  Austrian,  135-36;  Mon 
tenegrin,  200;  Italian  protec 
tion  "to  emigrants,  332 

Gowda,  Michael,  Ruthenian- 
Canadian  poet,  128,  449-51  . 

Graft,  immigrants  as  victims 
of,  367-68,  418 

Granite  City,  Mo.,  Bulgarians 
in,  274 

Grasshopper  plague  in  Nebras 
ka,  346-47 

Great  Britain,  immigration 
from  Hungary,  438 


INDEX 


523 


Great  Russians,  126 

Greek  Catholics,  128-30,  266, 
268,  384-87 

Greek  Orthodox  church,  129, 
131,  156,  273,  275,  384-87 

Greeks — Illiteracy,  479;  occu 
pations,  282 

"Griners",  148,  155 

Guide  books  for  immigrants, 
218-19,  319,  334 

Guslars,  164,  201 

Gymnasia,  Slovak,  no 

Gymnastic  societies,  382 


HACKMEN,  Slavic,  314 

Hadley,  Mass.,  Polish  inhab 
itants,  330,  335,  473-74 

Hamburg,  embarkation  statis 
tics,  436 

Handbooks  for  immigrants, 
218-19,  3*9.  334 

Handicrafts  and  trades — Bo 
hemian,  77;  Slovak,  97-99, 

355 
Harness    makers,    Bohemians, 

226 
Hats,  significance  of,  to  Slavic 

women,  106-7,  188,  226,  360, 

371-2 

Hausler,  43 
Havre,  embarkation  statistics, 

436-37 

Hawaiians,  illiteracy,  479 
Hazelton,     Penn. — Bank     de 
posits  by  immigrants,    305; 
churches  in,  385 ;  first  Slavic 
immigrants,  239-40 
Health — Croatians,    157,    170- 
71;  Slavic  immigrants,  375— 

77 

Hebrews.     See  Jews. 

Hermann,  Augustine,  Bohe 
mian  immigrant,  68,  206 

Herzegovina— Conditions  and 
emigration,  198,  249;  Ser 
vians  in,  156,  273 

Herzegovinians — How  name 
is  applied,  8;  illiteracy,  479; 
in  the  U.  S.,  195,  249,  433, 
460-64 

History,  factors  of,  4 

Holidays,  in  Croatia,  169 

Home  industries,  peasants  of 
Austria- Hungary,  47,  57,  91— 
93'  T53> 


Home  life.     See  Household  life. 
Homesickness,  58-60 
Horvats,  276 

Hospitals  maintained  by  em 
ployers,  303 

Hours  of  labor,  285-88,  465 
House  community,  21,  161-63 
Household  art,  47,  57,  89-93 
Household       life — Bohemians, 
42,    63-64,    84;      Croatians, 
161-67;  Galicians,  142;  Ru- 
thenians,  142-46;  Slavic  im 
migrants ,  349—77;     Slovaks , 

89-93 

Houses — Bohemian,  82;  Croa 
tian,  164-65;  Galician,  142; 
Moravian,  42;  Slovak,  88- 
90 

Housing,  American  immi 
grants,  329,  361-63 

Houseworkers,  Slavic,  354 

Hruby,  Professor,  Bohemian 
immigrant,  69 

Hungarians — In  the  U.  S.,  102, 
211-13,  234-35,  244,  248- 
49,  249-52,  254,  266,  295, 
460-67;  occupations,  313, 

353-54 

Hungary — Civil  population  by 
languages,  430;  conditions 
in,  28-36,  109;  emigration 
and  immigration,  101-105, 
437—44;  government  poli 
cies,  52-53,  109-12,  117—18, 
J57.  397»  447-49.;  maps,  30, 
32,  35,  105;  racial  statistics, 

445-47 

"  Hunkies,"  7,  115 

Hussites,  67-69,  208,  390 

Huzuls,  122 

Hysteria  among  Bohemian  im 
migrants,  376 


IDEALS  as  to  America's  mean 
ing,  405-406,  421-25 

Illegitimacy,  among  Croa 
tians,  170-71 

Illinois — Bohemians  in,  223, 
256,  261;  Croatians  in,  271; 
Poles  in,  209,  231,  262,  324; 
Russians  in,  278;  Slavic 
farmers  in,  469;  Slavs  in, 
234,  254,  306-307;  Slove 
nians  in,  233,  269 


INDEX 


Illiteracy  among  immigrants, 
78,  96,  no,  141,  167-69, 
196-97,  479 

Illyrian  movement,  149-50 

Imitation,  laws  of,  411,  418 

Immigrant  arrivals  who  have 
been  in  the  U.  S.  before,  463- 
64 

Immigrants — Effect!  of  Amer 
ican  life  upon,  34-36,  45, 
56-62,  82,  113-19,  M3-44, 
154,  181-83,  197-98,  224- 
25,  284,  289-90,  340,  352, 
360-61,  370-77,  389-425;  il 
literacy  of,  479;  not  coming 
to  join  relatives  or  friends, 
433;  rejected  at  Ellis  Isl 
and,  200;  return  to  home 
country,  61,  102,  116-19, 
144-45,  *54,  181,  250-52 

Immigration — E fleets  on  Amer 
ica,  4-5,  62,  114,  286-90, 
297-310,  398-425;  encour 
agement  by  boards  and 
agencies,  52-3,  218-19,  332- 
35;  policy  for  the  LJ.  S., 
403-407;  statistics,  210-13, 
244-52,  254,  261-62,  273, 
277,  281,  295,  400,  403,  433, 
438-42,  451,  460-64,  471-72 

Immigration  to  the  U.  S. — 
Austrian,  211-13,  234,  244, 
249-52,  254,  438-42,  460- 
61 ;  Belgian,  2 1  7  ;  Bohemian, 
63-84,  206-28,  234,  243-44, 
248-50,  254,  256-61,  281, 
306-307,  433,  460-64;  Bos 
nian,  195,  249-50,  433,  46o- 
64;  Bulgarian,  195,  199,  237, 
249-50,  273-76,  281,  433, 
460-64;  Croatian,  167-68, 
176-83,  237,  249-50,  256, 
271-72,  281,  433,  460-64; 
Dalmatian,  195-98,  210,  237, 
249-50,  2^8,  271,  281,  433, 
460-64;  (merman,  4,  78,  210- 
ii,  217,  249,  460-64;  Her- 
zegovinian,  195,  249,  433, 
460-64;  history  of  Slavic, 
205-52;  Hungarian,  102, 
211-13,  234-35,  244,  249- 
52,  254,  266,  438-42,  460- 
67;  Irish,  464,  467;  Italian, 
464,  467,  471-72;  Jewish, 
4,  6,  213,  226,  234,  236-37, 
247-4^,  251,  279,  294,  458~ 
59,  461;  Lithuanian,  464; 


Montenegrin,  195,  199-201, 
249,  273-74,  433,  460-64; 
nationalities  and  signih- 
cance,  3-9,  234,  237-38, 
247-52,  254,  280-81,  315- 
16,  398-425,  460-64;  peas 
ants,  37-201,  213,  221,  227, 
279,  321,  442;  Polish,  131- 
34,  140,  206-31,  234,  236, 
244,  248-50,  254,  256,  262- 
65,  281,  306-307,  433,  460- 
64;  re-immigration,  119,  251, 
463-64;  Russian,  133,  210- 
13.  237,  244,  248-50,  254, 
276-81,  433,  460-64,  471- 
72;  Rutheman,  132-33,  236, 
249-50,  256,  266-68,  281, 
433,  460-64;  Scandinavian, 
217,464;  Scotch,  464;  Ser 
vian,  195,  199-201,  237, 
249-50,  272-74,  281,  433, 
460-64;  Slavic,  234-35,  247- 
52,  280-81,  460-64,  467, 
471-72;  Slovak,  96,  100- 
103,  107,  236,  249-50,  256, 
266-67,  281,  433,  460-64; 
Slovenian,  152-53,  231-35, 
237,  249-50,  256,  269-70, 
281,  433,  460-64;  Turkish, 
248-49,276,460-64;  Welsh, 
3*5,  467 

Indebtedness — Croatians,  1 79- 
80;  Poles,  137,  47  3-74  : 
Slavic  emigrants,  49,  452; 
Slovaks,  95-96;  Slovenians, 

Indentured  servants  in  the 
South,  207 

Independent  fanners  -  Eastern 
states,  335;  Middle  West, 
325-26 

Indiana  Bohemians  in,  261; 
Poles  in,  262;  Slavic  farm 
ers  in,  469;  Slavs  in,  254 

Indians — Missions  to,  232; 
Nebraska,  347 

Indian  Territory,  Poles  in,  263 

Indo-Germanic  languages,  13 

Inducement  of  immigration 
by  employers,  238-39,  240- 
41;  see  also  Encouragement 
of  immigration. 

Industrial  accidents.  See  Acci 
dents  <ind  injuries. 

Industrial  expansion  in  the  U. 
S.,  relation  to  immigrant  la 
bor,  237-44, 289-90,  404-405 


Industrial   groupings,   6,     43- 
47*    7&-7S-    97-<W»    1  37-40, 


97,    213,      220-27,      *37~44^ 
270-72,    274,    282-84,    311- 

4§,  3$3~54>  44*>  455'  4*»5~7O 

Industrial  system,  modem,  30  2 
Infanticide,  Croatian,  170 
Influence     of     returned     emi 
grants.     See  Rfi94.ru  to  komt 


Injuries.     See    Accidents    and 


Inn-keepers.  Bohemian,  1*6 
Insect  powder,  Dalmatian,  103 
Intemperance  —  Da  1  m  a  t  i  a  n  s, 

107;      Rut  henians,    1  40—4  1  ; 

Slavic  immigrants,  342,  365- 

70;    Slovaks,  04-95 
Interest  and  usury—  America, 

323,  328;     Europe,  05,  130, 

170—  So 
Intermarriage,     See  Racial  /«- 


Investments  by  immigrants, 
305-10 

Iowa  —  Bohemians  in,  223-25, 
260-01,  325;  forming  con 
ditions  in,  325;  Poles  in,  202; 
Slavic  formers  in,  400  ;  Slavs 
in,  234,  254;  Slovenians  in, 

Irish—  Illiteracy,  470;  in  the 
U,  S.,  4,  o,  77,  106,  238,  315, 
36$,  374,  404,  467;  occupa 
tions,  315,  353-54 

Irish  Catholics,  attitude  to- 
vrard  foreigners,  38$ 

Iron  and  steel  workers  —  Bohe 
mian,  220;  Croatian,  272; 
Pittsburgh  conditions,  285- 
oo,  293,  301;  Slavic,  282, 
293,  312,  314-15;  Slovenian, 

XS5 
Isolation.      See  Social  barriers; 

also  Farm  «•*&»£«. 
Istria  —  Croatian       emigration 

from,   198,   240,   272;      Ital 

ians  in,  191;  population,  48; 

Servians  in,  150;    wages,  <;o 
Italian-  La  dinish    language    in 

Austria-Hungary,  420 
Italians  —  Fanners,  318-20;   il 

literacy,    470;      in   Austria  - 

Hungary,  33,  148,  152,  IQI; 

in  the  (J.  b,,  4,  6,  77,  205, 

315 


occupations,     282,     315-10, 
318-20,  353,  465-00;  wages, 
404—00 
Italy,   money  orders  sent   to, 

47i-7o 

Itinerant  trades,  07,  153 


JAPANESE,  illiteracy,  479 
Jersey    City,    Greek  Catholics 

in,  208 

Jesuits,  in  Bohemia,  67 
Jews — Classification.  24  7-48 ; 
illiteracy,  479;  in  Austria- 
Hungary,  05-90,  00-100, 
na,  122,  140-41,  179,  431; 
in  the  U.  S.,  4,  6,  213,  220, 
234,  336-37,  247-48,  251, 
270,  iO4,  458-50,  401;  oc 
cupations,  282,  311,  350; 
sense  of  nationality  in,  12- 
13,  us 

John  of  Kolno,  131,  206 
Joliet,  111.,  Slovenians  in,  233, 
200 


KANSAS  —  Bohemians  in,  235, 
261;  Poles  in,  202;  Russians 
in,  278;  Slavic  fanners  in, 
400;  Slavs  in,  235,  254;  Slo 
venians  in,  270 

Karst,  152,  i>8,  370 
i   Kassubs  in  Europe,  statistics 
of,  17 

Kentucky,  Poles  in,  207,  20; 
j   Kewaunee  county,    Wis.,    Bo 
hemian    settlers,    210,    220, 


, 

Kinship,     racial.     See 


Kladno,  emigration  from,  70 
K  ohlbeck ,    Re v .    Valentine. 

Estimates  of  Bohemians  in 

the  U.  S.,  20o-<>i 
Kollar,  apostle  of  Panslavism, 

20-27 

Kolno,  John  of,  131,  206 
Komenskv.     See    (JV>wrw«*s. 
Korbel     Brothers,     California, 

Koreans,  illiteracy,  479 
Kosciuszko,  208 
Kostur,  275 
Krainers,  1 48,  i  ?;  s 
Kruszka,    Rev.   W,    X.     Esti 
mates  of  Poles  in  the  U.  S., 


526 


INDEX 


262;  list  of  the  founding  of 
Polish  parishes  previous  to 
1880,  459-60 

Kulturkampf,  impulse  to  emi 
gration,  213-14 

Kuttenberg,  emigration  from, 
*75>  79.  357 


LABOR  unions — effect  on  wages, 
285,  289-93;  Slavic  work 
ers,  290-93 

Labrador,  131,  206, 

Lace  makers,  Slovak,  355 

Laibach,  151 

Land  agents  as  factors  in 
farm  settlement,  332-34 

Land  grants  to  Poles  in  U.  S., 
209 

Land  holdings — In  Austria- 
Hungary,  39-42,  62,  116; 
in  Croatia,  159—63;  179; 
in  Dalmatia,  195;  in  Eu 
rope,  of  immigrants,  294;  in 
Galicia,  135,  137—38,  144; 
Slovak,  1 1 6 

Land,   inducements  for  immi-   { 
gration,  218-20,  237,  323 

Land  owners,  Slavic- Ameri 
can,  306-10,  322,  325-28 

Land  prices  and  availability — 
America,  56,  323-325,  328, 
334;  Croatia,  183;  Galicia, 

!39>    MS 

Land  purchases  by  returned 
emigrants,  62,  116,  144-45, 
182,  183,  185 

Land  tenure,  Austria-Hun 
gary,  38-43 

Language  as  a  factor  in  na 
tionality,  10,  12,  15,  22-23, 
69,  317-18^402 

Languages,  diversity  in  Slavic 
countries,  31-33,  110-12, 
123,  429-3! 

Latin  language,  in  Hungarian 
parliament,  109 

Leadership,  among  immigrants, 
283,  308-309,  343,  379,  394, 
424 

Leather  curriers,  Slavic,  314 

Legends  and  traditions — Bo 
hemian,  65;  Croatian,  163— 
64;  Polish,  120;  Slovak,  87- 
88 

Lesikar,  Bohemian  immigrant, 
215-16 


Libraries — Books  in  foreign 
languages,  417-18;  in  Cro 
atia,  169;  in  Slavic  organi 
zations,  381-82 

Lika-Krbava,  158-59,  177, 183- 

.9° 

Lime  burners,    Slavic,    314-15 

Limestone  deserts,  152,  158, 
192,  376 

Liptd  cheese,  97 

Liquor  habit — European  Slavs, 
94—95,  140-41,  197;  Slavic 
immigrants,  342,  365-70 

Liquor  traffic — R uthenians, 
140—41;  Slovaks,  94-95 

Lissa,  196 

Literature,  as  a  nationalizing 
force,  22,  27 

Lithuanian  s — Classification, 
247;  illiteracy,  479;  in  the 
U.  S.,  464 

Littai,  153 

Little  Russians — In  Europe, 
17;  in  the  U.  S.,  278;  name 
for  Ruthenians,  126;  sense 
of  national  tradition,  150 

Liverpool,  embarkation  sta 
tistics,  437 

Ljubljana.     See  Laibach. 

Loans — America,  323,  328; 
Slavic  countries,  50,  80,  95- 
96,  108,  139,  179—80 

Local  history  and  source  ma 
terial,  205 

Locksmiths,  Bohemian,  77 

Locust  plague,  Nebraska,  346- 

47 

Lodges  among  Slavic  immi 
grants,  381—82 

Longshoremen,  Dalmatian,  283 

Lorain,  Ohio,  co-operative 
store,  309 

Louisiana — Bohemians  in,  211; 
Poles  in,  263 

Lower  Austria — Population, 
48;  wages,  56 

Lusatians,  229 


McCoRMicK  machinery  in 
Galicia,  145 

Macedonia,  Bulgarian  immi 
gration  from,  249,  275 

Macedonian  revolution,  1904, 
as  cause  of  emigration,  275 

Machinists  —  Bohemian,  226; 
Slavic,  314 


INDEX 


527 


McKeesport,  saloons  in,  365-66 

McKee's  Rocks  strike,  1909, 
291 

McQuaid,  Rev.  J.  A.  Account 
of  Slovaktown,  337-38 

Magyar  language — Enforced 
use  of,  110-12,  117;  number 
speaking  in  Austria-Hun 
gary,  429-30 

Magyarizing  policies  in  Hun 
gary,  109-112,  117-118,  157, 
397,  447-49 

Magyars — Classification,  247; 
emigration  from  and  return 
to  Hungary,  441,  443;  emi 
gration  from  Croatia-Sla- 
vonia,  454;  illiteracy,  479; 
in  Austria-Hungary,  33,  85, 
101,  109-112,  117-118,  445- 
47;  in  Hungary,  445~47J 
in  the  U.  S.,  295 

Mahanoy  City,  Slav  property 
owners  in,  307 

Mail  order  business,  among 
farmers,  325 

Maine — Poles  in,  263;  Slavs 
in,  254 

Malarial  regions,  152 

Malo-Russians,  126 

Manitowoc  County,  Wis.,  Bo 
hemian  settlers,  220 

Manufacturing  industries,  Slav 
ic,  99,  139 

Manufacturing  products,  value 
of  in  the  U.  S.,  289 

Marko  Kralevitch,  163 

Marriage  ages,  Slavic  immi 
grants,  330,  342 

Marriage  between  races.  See 
Racial  fusion. 

Marriage  customs — Croatian, 
166-67;  Polish,  146;  Slavic, 
366-67,  372 

Married  emigrants  from  Car- 
niola,  451 

Married  women  in  factories, 
358-60 

Maryland — Bohemians  in,  261; 
Poles  in,  262;  Russians  in, 
278;  Slavic  farmers  in,  469; 
Slavs  in,  68 

Mason,  Otis  T.  Classification 
of  immigrants,  247 

Masons,  Bohemian,  77,  226 

Massachusetts — Bohemians  in, 
261;  Poles  in,  262,  327-29, 
341,  473-74;  Russians  in, 


278;  Slavic  farmers  in,  469, 
473-74;  Slavs  in,  240-42, 
254,  327-29 

Matrons  on  immigrant  ships, 
407 

Mechanics,  Slavic,  312,  315 

Mennonites  in  the  U.  S.,   278 

Metalworkers,  Slavic,  312,  314 

Mexicans,  illiteracy,  479 

Mexico — Bohemian  immigrants 
to,  216;  Servians  in,  274 

Michigan — Bohemians  in,  223, 
261;  Croatians  in,  176,  272; 
immigration  policies,  220; 
Poles  in,  231,  235,  262  ;  Slavic 
farmers  in,  469;  Slavs  in, 
235,  254;  Slovenians  in, 
232-33,  270 

Middle  West — Early  settlers, 
207-35,323;  farming  indus 
tries  in,  322;  later  immigra 
tion  to,  243,  254,  274,  279 

Mielec,  134 

Migrations  of  peoples,  3-9,  406 

Milcin,  75 

Militar  Grenze,  159-61 

Military  frontier,  159-61 

Military  organization,  in  Croa 
tia,  159-61 

Military  service,  as  cause  of 
emigration,  51,  108,  153,  452 

Milwaukee  —  Bohemians  in, 
220;  Poles  in,  263 

Mine  explosions,  Federal  in 
vestigation  of,  303 

Miners — Bohemian,  77,  79,313; 
Croatian,  272;  homes  of, 
372-74;  Pittsburgh  condi 
tions,  285—90,  293,  299,  301; 
Polish,  313;  Slavic,  238-40, 
282,  293,  297-99,  312-15, 
442,  467;  Slovenian,  155 

Mining  industries,  Austria- 
Hungary,  79,  122 

Minnesota — Bohemians  in,  223, 
261;  Poles  in,  231,  262,  Ru- 
thenians  in,  339;  Slavic 
farmers  in,  469;  Slavs  in, 

234,  254;    Slovenians  in,  233 
Mir,  Russian,  21 
Mississippi,  descent  of,  207 
Mississippi,  Poles  in,  263 
Missouri — Bohemians  in,    210, 

235,  261;       Poles    in,    262; 
Slavic  farmers  in,  469 ;  Slavs 
in,  254 

Mobility  of  Slavic  labor,  294-96 


5*8 


INDEX 


Moczygemba,     Rev.     Leopold, 

228 
ModruS-Fiume,  175 

Moharnrnedans,  Slavic,  198 

Molly  Maguire  troubles,  238 

Monastir,  Bulgarians  from,  275 

Money  making,  intoxication  of, 
420-22 

Money  remittances  of  immi 
grants,  82,  114,  144-45,  I52, 
155,  181-82,  186,  196,  303- 
305,  47J~73 

Montana — Bohemians  in,  261; 
Poles  in,  263;  Slovenians  in, 
270 

Monte  Maggiore,  -152 

Montenegrins — How  name  is 
applied,  8;  illiteracy,  479; 
in  the  U.  S.,  195,  199-201, 
273-74,  433,  460-64 

Montenegro,  conditions  and 
emigration,  152,  156,  160, 
199-201 

Morals  —  Croatians,  170-71; 
Dalmatians,  196-97;  Poles, 
474;  Slavs,  342,  365-70; 
Slovaks,  113 

Moravia — Slovaks  in,  446 ;  vil 
lage  land  holdings,  40-43; 
wages,  56 

Moravians — How  name  is  ap 
plied,  8,  74;  illiteracy,  479; 
in  America,  69,  74,  208, 
216-17,  433,  458,  460-64; 
statistics  of  population,  48, 

43° 
Mortgages  on  American  farms, 

323 
Music,  Slavic  love  of,  87,  163- 

64,  226,  283,  372-73,  382 
Musicians  —  Bohemian,    226; 

Slavic,  283 
Mutual  aid  among  immigrants, 

319-20,    345,    349-5°.    359. 

379 
Mutual  benefit   societies,    116, 

302,   305-306,   378-81 


NAMES,  personal,  Americaniz 
ing  of,  412 

Naming  of  places  Magyarized 
in  Hungary,  1 1 1 

Naples,  embarkation  statistics, 

436 

Napoleonic  wars,  effects  on 
nationalism,  149 


Naprstek,  Vojta,  Bohemian 
immigrant,  70 

National  antipathies,  8-9,  12, 
24,  31-36,  109-12,  116-17, 
125,  130-31,  151,  226,  291- 
92,  379,  388,  396-97,  409-10 

National  characteristic s — 
Americans,  398-402;  Bul 
garians,  275-76;  Croatians, 
156,  159—60;  Dalmatians, 
193,  196-97;  Poles,  241— 
42,  356,  473-74;  Russians, 
279;  Slavs,  20-27,  44-47. 
57-62,  283,  290-94,  300- 
301,  365-78;  Slovaks,  87-95 

National  Croatian  Society, 
301-302 

National  groupings,  6-9,  17- 
18,  28,  122,  126,  150-51,  191, 
234-38,  244-81,  460-64,  467, 
470 

National  revivals,  24-27,  33- 
36,  69,  78,  116—19,  I25~ 26, 
140-41,  396-97 

National  societies  among  Slavic 
immigrants,  117,  301-302, 
305-306,  378-81 

National  types,  10-11,  93-94, 
158-59,  193,  397,  403-404, 
410 

Nationality,  factors  of,  10,  20, 
122,  193,  260,  378-79,  396- 
97,  411—18 

Naturalized  Slavs,  330,  395 

Nebraska — Bohemians  in,  227, 
259,  261,  319-20,  341,  343- 
48;  homestead  experiences 
in,  319-20,  343-48;  Poles 
in,  231,  262;  Slavic  farmers 
in,  469;  Slavs  in,  235,  254; 
Slovenians  in,  233 

Needle  trades — Slavic  women 
in,  354;  wages,  288 

Negroes,  Slavic  opinion  of,  144 

Nemec,  Bozena,  Bohemian  au 
thor,  83 

Neuhaus,  79,  8 1 

New  England,  Servians  in,  274 

New  Hampshire — Hungarians 
in,  234;  Poles  in,  262;  Slavs 
in,  254 

New  Jersey — Bohemians  in, 
206,  261;  Poles  in,  207,  262; 
Russians  in,  278;  Ruthe- 
nians  in,  268;  Slavic  farmers 
in,  469;  Slavs  in,  254; 
vaks  in,  267 


INDEX 


529 


New  Orleans — Austrians  in, 
271;  Bohemians  in,  211; 
port  of  entry,  215 

Newspapers,  117,  119,  131, 
220,  383-84 

New  York  City — Bohemians  in, 
68-69,  79,  206,  227,  259, 
357.  376.  378;  Poles  in,  131, 
206-207,  211,  2^3'i  port  of 
entry,  215;  Slovenians  in, 
270 

New  York  State — Bohemians 
in,  223,  256,  261;  Croatians 
in,  272;  Dalmatians  in,  196; 
Hungarians  in,  235;  Poles 
in,  209,  231,  262;  Russians 
in,  278;  Ruthenians  in,  268; 
Slavic  farmers  in,  469 ;  Slavs 
in,  253-56;  Slovaks  in,  267; 
Slovenians  in,  234,  270 

Niemcewicz,  131,  208 

North  America,  Slavic  immi 
gration  to,  451-55 

North  Atlantic  States,  Slavic 
immigration  to,  254 

North  Carolina,   Poles  in,   263 

North  Central  States  —  Ser 
vians  in,  274;  Slavs  in,  254 

Northwestern  States,  Servians 
in,  274 

Novi  Bazar,  Servians  in,  156 

Nursery  rhymes,  Bohemian, 
83,  444-45 


OCCUPATIONS — Austrians,  313, 
353-54;  Bohemians,  46,  76— 
78,  220-21,  226-227,  282, 
3!3.  32°.  353-57;.  Bulgar 
ians,  274;  Croatians,  176, 
271-72,  283,  455;  Dalma 
tians,  192,  272,  283,  326; 
English,  315;  Finns,  316; 
French-Canadians,  353;  Ger 
mans,  315,  353;  Greeks, 
282;  Hungarians,  313,  353- 
54;  Irish,  315,  353-54;  Ital 
ians,  282,  315-16,  318-20, 
353.  465-66;  Jews,  282,  311, 
356;  Poles,  46,  282-83,  313, 
320-21,  353-56;  Russians, 
313,  320,  353-54;  Ruthe 
nians,  137-40;  Scandina 
vians,  315;  Slavs,  45-47,  213, 
237-44,  282-84,  289,  311- 
48,  353-54,  442,  455.  465- 
70;  Slovaks,  97-99,  355;  Slo- 

34 


vemans,    151,  153,  270,   355; 
Syrians,  282;     Welsh,     315; 
of  women,  349-60 
Ode  to  Columbia,  422-23 
Office   holders,    Slavic   Ameri 
can,   395 

Ohio — Bohemians  in,  215,  223, 
226,  258,  261;  Croatians  in, 
271;  Hungarians  in,  235; 
Poles  in,  231,  262;  Slavic 
farmers  in,  469 ;  Slavs  in, 
235,  254;  Slovenians  in,  155, 
269 

Oil  workers,  Slavic,  283 
O  jib  way    grammar    and    dic 
tionary,  233 

Oklahoma — Bohemians  in, 22 7, 
261;     Poles  in,   263;    Slavic 
fanners  in,  469 
Old  Hadley,  Poles  in,  328 
Omaha — Bohemians    in,     259; 

Slovenians  in,  233 
Open  field  system,  39-44 
Oregon — Bohemians    in,     261; 
Poles  in,  263;     Slavic  farm 
ers  in,  469 

Organizations     among     Slavic 
immigrants,     117,     301-302, 
305-306,  377-95 
Overcrowding     in     immigrant 
homes,     294,     342,     350-51, 
362-63   376 
Overwork,   effects  of,    154-55, 

181,  300,  360,  365 
Oxen,  on  Nebraska  farms,  345 
Oyster  industry,  272,  283 


PACA,  William,  208 

Pacific    Islanders,       illiteracy, 

479 
Pacific  slope,  farm  conditions 

on,  322,  326 
Packing-house  labor,  272,  283, 

290 

Padrone  system,  309 
Panna  Marya,  Tex.,  Polish  set 
tlement,  228-29 
Panslavism,  25-27,  33-36,  116 
Parochial   schools — In  the   U. 

S.,  416-17;    Polish  criticism 

of,  477-78 
Parsons,  Charles,  Poles  brought 

to  Massachusetts  by,  240-41 
Passaic  handkerchief   factory, 

|   Passaic  library,  417 


530 


INDEX 


Passports  for  emigrants,  440— 

4i.  443 

Patriotism,  among  immigrants, 
34-36,  78,  116,  228,  379 

Pearl  button  industry,  effect  of 
tariff  on,  79,  283 

Peasant  millionaire,  431-32 

Peasants  —  Austria-Hungary, 
37-49,  431-32;  Bohemian, 
63-66,  70,  82-84,  2I3,  22I» 
227;  Croatian,  157-90;  Dal 
matian,  192-93;  emigration 
from  Croatia-Slavonia,  455; 
European  life,  318;  Galician, 
135,  137—38,  141—47;  immi 
gration  to  U.  S.,  37—201,  213, 
221,  227,  321,  377,  442;  Slo 
vak,  85-99,  108;  Slovenian, 

I5I. 

Peddling — Slavs,  282;  Slovaks, 
98;  Slovenians,  153 

Pellagra  regions,  152 

Pennsylvania — Bohemians  in, 
261;  Bulgarians  in,  276; 
Croatians  in,  271;  farm  con 
ditions  in,  335—36;  Irish  in, 
467;  Italians  in,  467;  Mora 
vians  in,  208;  nationality  of 
coal  miners  in,  467;  Poles 
in,  231,  262;  Russians  in, 
278;  Ruthenians  in,  268; 
Slavic  farmers  in,  469 ;  Slavs 
in,  235,  238-40,  243,  254-58, 
467;  Slovaks  in,  267;  Slo 
venians  in,  269;  Welsh  in, 
467 

Pennsylvania  Dutch,  340 

Pensions  for  employes,  82 

Persecution  of  immigrants  in 
Texas,  216,  229 

Personal  example  as  a  factor 
in  Americanization,  418-20 

Personal  motives  for  emigra 
tion,  54,  79-80 

Petr,  Joseph,  Bohemian  immi 
grant,  216-17 

Phillips,  Frederick,  Bohemian 
immigrant,  68-69,  2°6 

Phylloxera,  as  a  cause  of  emi 
gration  in  Croatia,  54;  in 
Carniola,  153,  176-77 

Physique  of  Slavs,  n,  87,  93- 

.94,  158-59,  J93 
Piece  work,  Pittsburgh  wages, 

288,  293 
Pilsen,    emigration    from,     75, 

79 


Pioneer  conditions  in  the  Uni 
ted  States,  214—35,  3I9~2°» 
.323.  331,  343-48 

Pisek,  emigration  from,  75 

Pittsburgh — Croatians  in,  271; 
wages  and  conditions  in, 
284-90,  301-303,  419 

Plumbers,  Slovak,  98 

Poetic  feeling — Bohemians,  83; 
Slavs,  57 

Polacks,  7,  8 

Poland,  Austrian.    See  Galicia. 

Poland,  partition  and  condi 
tions,  124-26 

Poles — Attitude  toward  Pan- 
slavism,  26;  emigration  from 
Galicia,  120—47,  248;  farmers, 
46,  56,  137-39;  how  name  is 
applied,  7,8;  illiteracy,  479; 
in  Europe,  1 7 ;  occupations, 
46;  oppression  of  Ruthe 
nians,  130—31;  proportion  in 
population,  122,  132 

Poles  in  the  U.  S. — Building 
and  loan  associations,  306- 
307 ;  character  of  immigrants, 
236;  distribution,  206-31, 
234-35,  254,  256,  262-65,  323~ 
24;  farmers,  320-36,  473-74; 
history  of  settlement,  131- 
34,206-31,  457;  landowners, 
323—24;  national  character 
istics,  241-42,  356,  473-74; 
occupations,  282-83,  311—16, 
320-21,  353-56,  470;  Polish 
churches,  459-60;  property, 
309-10;  servants,  140;  statis 
tics,  31-34,  23°-3!,  234-35, 
244,  248-50,  254,  262-65, 
281,  433 

Polish  churches  in  the  U.  S., 
228-29,  230-31,  233,  264-65, 
386-89,  459-60 

Polish  criticism  of  parochial 
schools,  477-78 

Polish  exiles,  209-10,  214 

Polish  insurrection,  1831,  im 
pulse  to  emigration,  209 

Polish  insurrection,  1861,  im 
pulse  to  emigration,  213 

Polish    language,     14-15,     22, 

i.23>  43° 
Polish  literature  of  American 

settlement,  457 

Polish  societies  in  America,  380 
Political  leaders,  among  Slavic 

immigrants,  283,  394 


INDEX 


531 


Political  qualities  of  Slavic 
Americans,  392-95 

Political  unrest,  as  a  factor  in 
emigration,  51-52,  69-70, 
108-12,  116-19,  2IO>  213—14, 
227,  237,  275,  277,  279 

Pollakovic,  Francis,  117 

Polonia,  Wis.,  Polish  settlers, 
230,  323 

Population  of  Austria-Hun 
gary — By  language,  429-3!; 
numbers,  movements  and 
density,  48,  75,  102-105,  122, 
126,  132-34,  150-51,  153, 
157,  176-79,  196 

Population  of  the  U.  S. — Com 
position,  400-402 ;  propor 
tion  of  Slavs,  234-35,  245-52 

Portage  county,  Wis.,  Polish 
settlement,  323 

Ports  of  embarkation  for  emi 
grants,  52,  215,  435~38 

Ports  of  landing  for  emigrants, 

2I5 

Portuguese,  illiteracy,  479 
Pottery  mending,  97-98 
Poverty,  effects  of,  50 
Prairie  settlers,  223 
Prairie  states,  farm  conditions 

in,  322,  324—26 

Pre-Columbian  discoveries,  131 
Press,  Slavic-American,  383-84 
Priests — Ruthenian,  129-30; 

Slovenian,  231-33 
Prikazy,  Moravia,  40-42 
Primitive  survivals,  44,  57,  61— 

62,   65,    77,   83,   88-91,    128, 

142,   146,    161-67,   J77>   X93> 

201 

Printers,  Bohemian,  226 
Professions  —  Bohemians     in, 

282;      Slavs    in,     283,     442, 

455 

Property  owned  by  Slavic  im 
migrants,  305-310,  322,  325- 

29.  455 
Protestantism     among     Slavs, 

22,  67-69,  122,  125,  149,  207, 

215,  266,  384,  392 
Prussian  war,  1866,  impulse  to 

emigration,  72,  213 
Public  libraries  and  books  in 

foreign  languages,  417-18 
Pulaski,  208 
Punxsutawney    coke    district, 

289 
Pupin,  Professor,  283 


(UAKERS,   279 

(uarrymen,  Slavic,  313-15 


RACE  prejudice  in  the  U.  S., 
404,  409—10 

Racial  analysis — Austria-Hun 
gary  and  Balkans,  32,  99- 
100,  122,  126,  156,  429-31, 
445-47;  immigration,  3—9, 
28,  73,  100,  102-103,  I26, 
132-35.  153.  183,  195,  234- 
38,  244-81,  295,  313-18, 
353-54,  433,  460-64,  467, 

47° 
Racial      decline,      Americans, 

328-31,  403,  406 
Racial   fusion,    399,    402,    404, 

407-410,  475-76 
Racial  kinship,  as  a  factor  in 

national  types,  10-11 
Racial     vitality — Croatians, 

157;      depletion  of,   154-55, 

178,      181,      300-303,      376; 

Slavs,  276 
Radom,     111.,     Polish    settlers, 

324 

Raftsmen,  Slovak,  97 

Ragusa,  conditions  and  emigra 
tion,  191-93 

Railroad  labor — Accidents, 
301;  Bulgarians,  274—75; 
Croatians,  272;  Slavic,  282, 
297,  314;  wages,  285 

Railroads — In  Croatia-Slavo- 
nia,  map  of,  173;  stimulation 
of  immigration  by,  52—3, 
219-20,  296,  332-33 

Rate  cutting,  Pittsburgh  mills, 
288 

Reaction  of  Emigrants  on 
Home  Country.  See  Return 
to  home  country. 

Reading  Clubs,  in  Croatia,  169 

Real  estate  owned  by  Slavic 
immigrants,  306-310,  329, 

336 

Reformation.  See  Protestant 
ism. 

Re-immigration  to  the  U.  S., 
119,  251,  463-64 

Rejected  immigrants,  200 
I   Relief   funds   for   injured   em 
ployes,  302 

Religious  divergences  of  Slavs, 
22,  67-69,  122,  125-26,  128— 


532 


INDEX 


31,  149,  156,  198,  266,  269, 
278—79,  380-81,  384—90 

Religious  societies  among  Sla 
vic  immigrants,  381 

Remittances  of  immigrants, 
82,  114,  144-45.  IS2.  i5S» 
181-82,  186,  196,  303-305, 

47I~73 

Renaming  of  places  in  Hun 
gary,  1 1 1 

Repression  of  emigration,  135— 
36,  200 

Republican  party  among  Sla 
vic  Americans,  394-95 

"Reserve  Army"  of  laborers, 
299-300 

Restaurant  keepers,  Dalma 
tian,  197,  283 

Return  to  home  country,  61, 
102,  116-19,  144-45,  J54, 
181,  250-52,  286,  294-96, 
300,  443,  463 

Revolution  of  1848-9,  as  cause 
of  emigration,  69,  174,  210, 
224,  227 

Rhode  Island — Poles  in,  262; 
Slavs  in,  254 

Rjeka.     See  Fiume. 

Rock  River  land  grants,  209 

Rolling  mills,  wages  in,  285 

Roman  Catholic  church — 
Among  Ruthenians,  128—30; 
effects  on  civilization,  22— 23 ; 
in  Bohemia,  67;  in  Croatia, 
156—57;  in  Poland,  125 

Roman  Catholic  church  in  the 
U.  S. — Bohemian,  215,  386; 
Croatian,  387;  Irish,  388; 
Polish,  228—29,  230—31,  233, 
264-65,  386,  389,  459-60; 
Ruthenian,  386;  Slavic,  294, 
384-90;  Slovak,  386;  Slo 
venian,  231-33,  269,  387 

Rotterdam,  embarkation  sta 
tistics,  436 

Roumania,  Slavic  immigration 
to,  442 

Roumanian  language,  123, 
429-30 

Roumanians  —  Classification, 
247;  emigration  from  and 
return  to  Hungary,  441,  443; 
illiteracy,  479;  proportion  of 
population,  33 

Round  toed  shoes,  300 

Rovnianek,  P.  V.,  Slovak  leader 
in  America,  98,  336-37,  449 


Royalton,  Minn.,  330 

Russia — Attitude  toward  Pan- 
slavism,  25—26;  money  or 
ders  sent  to,  471-73;  Slav 
emigration  from,  28,  248-49; 
treatment  of  Poland,  124—25 

Russian,  forms  and  use  of 
name,  7,  8 

Russian  language,  14 

Russian  Orthodox  church,  129, 
131,  384-87 

Russians — Illiteracy,  479;  in 
Europe,  17;  in  the  U.  S., 
133,  210-13,  230,  236-37, 
244,  249-50,  254,  276-81, 
433,  460-64,  471-72;  occu 
pations,  313,  320,  353-54 

Russification,  397 

Russinians.     See  Ruthenian. 

Russniak.     See  Ruthenian. 

Russophobia,  among  Magyars, 
26 

Ruthenian  churches  in  the  U. 
S.,  386 

Ruthenian,  forms  and  use  of 
name,  7,  8,  126 

Ruthenian  language  and  litera 
ture,  14,  123,  127-28,  430 

Ruthenian  poet  in  Canada, 
449-50 

Ruthenians — Emigration  of, 
99-101,  120-47,  441;  emi 
gration  from  and  return  to 
Hungary,  441,  443;  farmers, 
J37-39>  268-69,  338-39;  his 
tory  of,  127;  illiteracy,  168, 
479;  in  Canada,  128,  140, 
268-69,  338-39,  353,  449-5o; 
occupations,  137-40;  pro 
portion  in  population,  122, 
126,  249 

Ruthenians  in  the  U.  S.,  132- 
33,  249-50,  256,  267-69,  281, 
338-39,  433,  460-64 


SACHSENGANGER,  139 
Sailors,  Dalmatian,  192,  283 
St.  Louis — Bohemians  in,  210, 

215,227,259;  Bulgarians  in, 

274 
Saloon    keepers,    Slavic,    308- 


309»  3*4 
lit  m' 


Salt  mining,   in  Austria- Hun 
gary,  122 


INDEX 


533 


Salzburg  —  Population,    48; 

wages,  56 

Sandusky,  origin  of  name,  207 
San    Francisco,    Austrians    in, 

271 
Sanitary       conditions,    among 

Slavs,  57,  142,  164-65 
Savings  of  immigrants,  304-310 
Sawmill    laborers,     Bohemian, 

221 
Scandinavians — Illiteracy,  479 ; 

in   the    United   States,    217, 

315,  464;    occupations,  315 
Scotch — Illiteracy,  479;   in  the 

U.  S.,  464 

Seamstresses,  Slavic,  354 
Section   hands.     See    Railroad 

labor. 
Segregation     of     nationalities, 

410,  413 
Selective  forces,  45,  67-70,  76- 

80,    99,    106-107,    J59>    J76> 

194,   210,   213-14,   217,   223, 

227,  238-43,   271,  279,  282- 

83,    294,    317-20,     322,   370 
Serbian,  forms  of  name,  7 
Serfdom  —  Austria-Hungary, 

38-39;     Bohemia,    70;     the 

Ukraine,  127 
Servants,  77-78,   106—107,  140, 

226,  330,  353-54,442;  wages, 

32.7.  354  ^ 

Servia,  conditions  and  emigra 
tion,  199 

Servian  churches  in  the  U.  S., 

38.7 

Servians — Forms  and  use  of 
name,  7-8;  emigration  from 
and  return  to  Hungary,  441, 
443;  emigration  from  Croa- 
tia-Slavonia,  454;  illiteracy, 
479;  in  the  U.  S.,  195,  199- 
201,  237,  249-50,  272-74, 
281,  433,  460-64;  relation 
to  Croatians,  156 

Servo-Croatian  language,  14, 
156,  168,  191,  430 

Servo-  Croatians — Conditions 
and  emigration,  156-201;  in 
Europe,  17 

Settlements,  social,  function 
and  opportunity  of,  62,  425 

Shenandoah,  Slav  property 
owners  in,  306,  307 

Shepherds,  Slovak,  97 

Shipping,  effect  of  steam  power 
on, 194 


Shoemakers  —  Bohemian,     7  7  ; 

Slovak,  97 

Siberia,  emigration  to,  279-80 
Silesia — An    early  emigrant 

from,    215;    population,    48; 

wages,  56 

Singers,  Montenegrin,  164,  201 
Singing    and    choral    societies, 

.38.2 
Singing,    Slovak   part   singing, 

87 
Skilled  labor — Immigration  of, 

77,    98,    227,    272,    282-83; 

wages,  285,  293 
Slav  congresses,  25 
Slavic   immigrants,    291,    293- 

94,  298,  310,  329,  343,  350- 

53.  356,  36o~75 
Slavic  languages,  12-19,  25,  32, 

43° 

Slavic  literature,  22,  27 
Slavo-Baltic  languages,  13 
Slavonia,  conditions  and  emi 
gration,  178 

Slavonian,  how  name  is  ap 
plied,  7 

Slavonic,  how  name  is  applied,  7 
Slavs.     See  Distribution;  Emi 
gration;     European    history; 
Industrial    groupings;      Na 
tional     characteristics;      Na 
tional    groupings;     National 
types;     Occupations;     Relig 
ious  divergences;   etc. 
Slovak  churches  in  the  U.  S., 

386 

Slovak,  how  name  is  applied,  7 
Slovak  language,    14,  86,    no, 

43° 
Slovak    societies    in    America, 

379~81 

Slovaks — Condition  and  emi 
gration,  85-119,  441,  447-49; 
emigration  from  and  return 
to  Hungary,  441,  443,  447; 
farmers,  336-38;  illiteracy, 
479;  in  Europe,  17;  in  the 
U.  S.,  96,  98,  100—103,  107, 
236,  249-50,  256,  266-67, 
281,  283,  295,  379-81,  433, 
449,  460-64;  national  char 
acteristics,  87-95;  occupa 
tions,  97—99,  355;  political 
unrest,  51,  109-12,  116-19, 
422,  446,  449;  proportion  of 
population,  33,  86,^248,  445- 
47;  sense  of  national  life, 


534 


INDEX 


116-19,  I5°>  446;  in  Hun 
gary,  85-119,  445-447 

Slovaktown,  Ark.,  337 

Slovenian  churches  in  the  U. 
S.,  231-33,  269,  387 

Slovenian,  how  name  is  ap 
plied,  7,  8,  148 

Slovenian  language  and  liter 
ature,  14,  148—50,  430 

Slovenians — Conditions,  his 
tory  and  emigration,  1 48—5  5 , 
433;  farmers,  233,  270,  339- 
40;  illiteracy,  479;  in  Eu 
rope,  17;  in  the  U.  S.,  152- 
53.  231-35,  237,  249-50,  256, 
269-70,  281,  295,  433,  460- 
64;  occupations,  151,  153, 
2  7°'  35 5 »  proportion  in  pop 
ulation,  17,  150-51;  racial 
friction,  31,  151 

Slovensko,  conditions  in,  85- 
119 

Slovinci,  148 

Small  holdings,  39-42,  116, 
135.  i37-38»  144.  163,  179, 
*95 

Soborowski,  Albert,  206 

Social  barriers,  15,  21,  31,  59, 
317-19,  354,  388,  408-10, 
424 

Social  consciousness,  among 
Slavs,  34,  290,  378-79 

Socialism  among  Slavic  Amer 
icans,  392-93 

Socializing  forces,  5,  10-16,  20— 
24,  62,  127,  214,  223,  226, 
228,  230,  290—94,  317—20, 
377-79,  418-20,  425^ 

Social  life  among  Slavic  immi 
grants,  146-47.  3I7~I9.  366~ 
67,  381-83 

Social  settlement,  function  and 
opportunity,  62,  425 

Social  wastes,    178,    181,   300- 

303.  357.  376,  392 

Societies.  See  Clubs  and  socie 
ties. 

Sod  houses,  344-45 

Sodowsky  family,  207 

Sokols,  382 

Sonnichsen,  Albert,  Estimates 
of  Bulgarians  in  U.  S.,  274- 
76 

Sorbs — In  Europe,  17;  in  the 
U.  S.,  229 

South  America,  Slavic  immi 
gration  to,  438,  451 


South  Atlantic  states,  Slavic 
immigration  to,  254 

South  Carolina — Moravians  in, 
208;  Poles  in,  263;  Slavs  in, 
69 

Southeastern  states,  Servians 
in,  274 

Southern  states — Efforts  to  at 
tract  immigrants, 3 33;  wages 
for  day  laborers,  466 

South  Slavs,  148,  150,  156,  237, 

Southwestern  states — Farm  in 
dustries  in,  322  ;  Servians  in, 
274 

Spanish  Americans,  illiteracy, 

479 

Spanish,  illiteracy,  479 
Specialization  of  industry.    See 

Division  of  labor. 
Speech.     See  Language. 
Speeding  of   labor — 143,    155, 

181,    288,    300-303,   356-57; 

wage,  288 
Standards  of  living — Peasants 

of  Austria-Hungary,   43—48, 

50,  142,  182,  200-201 
Steamship    agencies,    as    fac 
tors  in  emigration,  52—53,  80, 

279,  296 
Steel  workers.     See  Iron   and 

steel  workers. 
Steerage,  216,  407 
Stevens    Point,     Wis.,     Polish 

settlers,  323 
Stimulation    of    Immigration. 

See  Encouragement  of  immi 
gration. 
Stock    raising — Croatia,     177; 

Slovaks,  97 
Stockyards    labor  —  Croatian, 

272;   Slavic,  283,  290,  300 
Stone  cutters — Bohemian,  226; 

Croatian,  272 
Storekeepers — Bohemian,  226; 

Slavic,  307-308 
Stoves,  Croatian,  164 
Strike  breakers,  290 
Strikes — Cause  of   emigration, 

79,227,238—39;  Slavic  labor 

in,  290—93 

Strolling  players,  169-70 
Students,      Slovak,      expelled 

from  college,    448—49 
Styria — Emigration  from,  152; 

population,  48;   wages,  56 
Sugar-beet  industry,  341 


INDEX 


535 


Sugar  refinery  labor,  283 

Suicide,  Bohemian  immigrants, 
376 

Sweatshops — Bohemian,  227, 
282,  358;  wages  in,  288 

Syphilis,  rare  among  immi 
grants,  171 

Syrians — Illiteracy,  479;  oc 
cupations,  282 


TAILORESSES,  Slavic,  354 
Tailors,     Bohemian,     77,     226, 

227,  282 

Tanners — Bohemian,  226;  Sla 
vic,  314;   Slovak,  97 
Tariff,  cause  of  Bohemian  emi 
gration,  78-79 
Tatar  invasions,  23,  127 
Tatra  mountains,  120—21 
Taxation,  cause  of  emigration, 

51'  432 

Teamsters,  Slavic,  314 
Tennessee,  Poles  in,  263 
Teutons — Contact  with  Slavs, 
19,   21-22;    immigration  of, 
4,  237 

Texas — Bohemians  in,  214-17, 

224-35,  259.  261,  458;   Poles 

in,    131,    209,    228-29,    262; 

Slavic  farmers  in,  469 

Textile   workers,    Slavic,    283, 

314,  354-55.  468 
Theatricals  among  Slavic  im 
migrants,  382 

Three-field  system  of  agricul 
ture,  40 
Timber,  farming.     See  Wooded 

states 

Tinkers,  97-98,  153 
Tinplaters,  Slovak,  98 
Tinware  factories,  Slovak,  98 
Tobacco    workers — Bohemian, 

79,  227;   Slavic,  354 
Trade  agreements,  292 
Traders,  Dalmatian,  193 
Trades.     See  Occupations. 
Transportation     agencies,      as 
factors  in  emigration,  52-53 
Transportation  conditions,  216 
Transportation  improvements, 
effects    on    emigration,     52, 
106,  173,  175,  185,  194,  279 
Transportation  routes,  52,  173, 

215.  279,  435-38 
Trencsen,  Matthew  of,  87 
Trieste — Embarkation     statis 


tics,  436-37;  Italians  in,  191; 

population,    48 ;     Slovenians 

in,  151 ;  wages,  56 
Troy,  N.Y.,  Polish  immigrants, 

209 
True    Story    of    a    Bohemian 

Pioneer,  331,  343-48 
Tuberculosis  among  Slavic  im 
migrants,  376 
Turkey,     Slavic     immigration 

from,  248—49,  276,  460-64 
Turkish  immigrants,  illiteracy, 

479 
Turkish    invasions  of  Europe, 

23-24,  86-87,  J59 
Tymkevich,  Father  Paul,  419, 

423-24 
Tyrol — Population,  48 ;  wages, 

156 


UKRAINIAN,  name  for   Ruthe- 

nians,  126 
Unemployment,    among     Slav 

immigrants,  296-97 
Uniates,  128-30,  266,  268,  384- 

87 

Unionism.     See  Labor  unions. 

Unitarianism,  among  Slavs, 
125,  392 

United  Catholics,    See  Uniates. 

United  Greek  Catholics.  See 
Uniates. 

United  States  immigration. 
See  Immigration. 

United  States,  maps,  257,  321 

United  States  Steel  Corpora 
tion,  inspection  service,  303 

Unskilled  labor.  See  Day  la 
borers. 

Upholsterers — Bohemian,  226; 
a  returned  Carniolan,  154 

Upper  Austria  —  Population, 
48;  wages,  56 


VAJANSKY,  Hurban.  Ode  to 
Columbia,  422-23 

Varasdin  county,  Croatia,  178 

Venereal  diseases,  171 

Vermont — Poles  in,  263;  Slavs 
in,  254 

Vienna,  wages  and  cost  of  liv 
ing  in,  8 1 

Village  life — Bohemia,  82,  88; 
Carniola,  154;  Croatia,  169, 
171,  183-90;  Galicia,  142; 


536 


INDEX 


Slavic,  37—43,   318;    Slovak,   I 

88-93,  97 
Vinds,  148 
Virginia — Bohemians  in,    261;   ' 

Poles  in,  207;  Slavic  farmers  ' 
-    in,  469 
Vital  statistics,  Hadley,  Mass., 

33° 

Vorarlberg  —  Population,     48 ; 
wages,  56 


WAGES — Farm  labor  in   Aus 
tria-Hungary,     55-56,     432;   I 
Neuhaus    and    Vienna,    81; 
Slavs  in  the  U.  S.,   284—90,    j 
299,  354,  464-66 
Waitresses,  Slavic,  353-54 
Wall   decoration,    Slovak,    89,   i 

163 

Wandering  actors,  169-70 
Wandering  trades,  97,  153 
Washington  state — Bohemians 
in,  261;  Poles  in,  262;  Slavic 
farmers  in,  469;    Slovenians   | 
in,  270 

Washwomen,  Slavic,  355 
Watchmakers,  Bohemian,  226     j 
Wedding  celebrations,  366-67 
Welfare  work,  303 
Welsh — Illiteracy,  479;   in  the 
U.  S.,  315,  467;  occupations, 

Wends,  17,  148;  in  the  U.  S., 
229 

West — Dalmatians  in,  196; 
Slavs  in,  213,  254 

West  Indians,  illiteracy,  479 

White  Mountain,  battle  of,  ef 
fect  on  Bohemia,  67 

Whittier's  "Snowbound,"  128, 

449 
Windows    in   peasant    houses, 

165 

Wine-growing  regions,  153, 
176-77,  194-95 

Wire  workers — Slavic,  283; 
Slovak,  97-98 

Wisconsin — Austrians  in,  234; 
Belgians  in,  217;  Bohemians 
in,  210,  217-23,  234,  260—61, 
323;  Germans  in,  217;  im 
migration  policies,  218;  Poles 
in,  230,  234,  262,  323-24; 
Scandinavian  settlers,  217; 
Slavic  farmers  in,  320,  469; 
Slavs  in,  234,  254 


Wisconsin  Historical  society, 
205 

Woman  movement,  among 
Slavs,  359-60,  384 

Women  —  American,  Slavic 
opinion  of,  377;  as  field 
workers,  87,  160,  196,  329, 
342;  competition  with  men, 
355-56,358;  dress,  57-8,  72, 
82,  90-92,  147,  192,  360-1, 
370-2;  economic  position  of, 
349-60;  effect  of  emigration 
on,  59-60,  113,  144-46,  170, 
187-89,  376-77;  emigration 
from  Austria,  434;  emigrants 
from  Carniola,  451;  emigra 
tion  from  Croatia-Slavonia, 
454-55;  endurance,  175,  376 

Women — Immigration  to  U.  S., 
106-107,  I4°»  J53'  2OO»  226, 
277»  349 >  469;  occupations, 
349-60;  physique,  morals 
and  culture  of  Slavic  women, 
87,  113,  167,  170,  175,  196; 
position  of,  among  Slavic 
immigrants,  359-60,  377; 
Slavic,  on  farms  in  the  U.  S., 
469;  wages,  354.  See  also 
Home  industries;  Household 
life. 

Women's  publications,  Bohe 
mian,  384 

Wooded  states,  farm  condi 
tions  in,  322,  324 

Woodsmen  —  Croatians,  176, 
283;  Slovak,  97 

Workingman,  contrasted  with 
peasant,  44 

Workmen's  compensation,  302- 

303 


YANKEES  defined,  398 

Yonkers  —  Co-operative  tene 
ment  houses,  309;  Women 
in  factories,  355 


Z  A  BO  ROW  SKY,  Albrecht,  206 
Zabriskie  family,  206 
Zadruga,  21,  161-63 
Zagrab.     See  A  grant. 
Zakopane,  120 
Zeliary,  30 

Zinzendorf,  Count,  208 
Z61yom,  101 


IsQfe^SSSr 


YC  50240 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERKELEY 


BDDD6M3310 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


